162 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



56 pounds of shelled corn, yet the supervisor usually selects his 

 rod or two rods several days before the rest of the field 

 is harvested, and in those intervening days the ripening corn 

 will shrink from two to five per cent. Take Mr. G. W. 

 Wood's corn, for example. The two rods which I gathered 

 October 7th, shrank 25^ per cent., while the rest of the 

 field, harvested about the last of October, shrank only 19.96 

 per cent., making more than 5} peT cent, difference. This 

 corn was rather green at the time of harvest, and being on low 

 ground did not ripen so fast as it would have done on higher 

 and warmer land. 



With Mr. James Howard's corn, the case was different. His 

 two rods, gathered October 6th, were riper and on higher land ; 

 this shrank in weight 23 per cent., while the whole acre, har- 

 vested some ten days later, (being in such a state of forward- 

 ness that the ripening process was more rapid,) arrived to such 

 a state of dryness during the intervening ten days, that it 

 shrank in weight only 18-j 5 7 g per cent, to the first of January; 

 thus making a difference of nearly 4.] per cent, in the shrink- 

 age between the specimen rods and the whole acre. Thus you 

 may perceive that the difficulties are numerous and various in 

 obtaining an exact estimate of an acre of corn from the weight 

 of a single rod taken from the field even but a few days before 

 the whole is harvested. 



But with all these difficulties, so various and so numerous, 

 the experiments which have been made under the offer of this 

 premium have shown us to a demonstration, that more than 

 one hundred bushels of .good, sound corn can be raised on one 

 acre of land in Plymouth County. Also, that 85 pounds of 

 ears, at the time corn is usually gathered into the crib, will 

 yield a bushel, or 56 pounds of shelled corn ; and yet, if we 

 take 85 pounds of ears from different fields of different varie- 

 ties of corn, and different degrees of ripeness consequent upon 

 the varieties of soil, the modes of culture, the kinds and appli- 

 cation of manure, several days or weeks before the whole field 

 is in a suitable state of ripeness to put away in the crib, 85 

 pounds of ears .would not be sufficient to allow for a bushel, 

 and 1 know not what number of pounds could be adopted 

 as a uniform standard ; and to make an allowance in weight 

 where corn is dry, and very dry, damp, and very green, 



