THE CULTURE OF CORN. 85 



whose attention, as an expert in the artificial fertilization of 

 plants, has been for some years past turned to this subject. 

 He has opposed the ideas of Dr. Lawes of England, and 

 most writers, that corn should be placed in the list of grain- 

 crops which require to be supplied with a surplus of nitro- 

 gen, but has insisted that it should be classed with clover, 

 and the leguminous crops which yield large quantities of 

 nitrogen in their product, but require a very inconsiderable 

 supply. A very large number ef experiments and practical 

 results in the field have proved that Mr. Mapes's opinion is 

 the true one, and that Dr. Lawes, not knowing the peculiar 

 habit of our corn-crop, from unfamiliarity with it in the 

 field, has been led into error. This, then, being the case, 

 the problem before the Eastern farmer is very much simpli- 

 fied. He has already become familiar with the use of artifi- 

 cial fertilizers in growing wheat, and he must learn how to 

 apply these to corn with advantage, and with them to make 

 use of the best methods of cultivation, so that he can, by 

 the use of skill, overcome the ease and cheapness with which 

 corn is grown on the fertile Western prairies. 



COEN-FEETILIZATION. 



It has long been known by good farmers that the best 

 corn-crops could be grown on a newly inverted sod. Some 

 years ago, when residing in Pennsylvania, I thought I had 

 succeeded remarkably well in growing a crop of corn, equal 

 to more than seven hundred bushels, on a field of thirteen 

 acres of heavy clover-sod, on which the clover, when it was 

 ploughed in, was a foot high and quite thick. I was much 

 impressed also to see, about the same time, seventy-five bushels 

 per acre grown on an old and very thick grass-sod, ploughed 

 in, on a very fertile farm in Delaware County in that State. 

 These fields were prepared with all the careful methods known 

 to good farmers, and consisted of naturally good soU. Noth- 

 ing can be justly said in disfavor of such methods as far as 

 they go ; but they do not go far enough. Farmers have to 

 learn that it is not the sod so much which feeds the com 

 directly as they have supposed, and have been taught by 

 some writers, but that the fresh sod, decomposing, exerts a 

 secondary effect upon the crop by rendering the soil-particles 

 more soluble ; by dissolving from them, in fact, in the process 



