RULE FOR ESTIMATING THE YIELD. 35 



Once hoeing is enough, if the field is free from weeds. My 

 corn this year was hoed but once. The style of cultivating 

 corn is very various. Some farmers spread manure on grass- 

 land and plough it under six inches or more ; some never lay 

 manure in the hill ; some hoe when it is no more than three 

 inches out of the ground, and hoe two or three times, and so 

 on ; but the proof of the pudding is in the eating of it, and 

 the test of excellence in farming is always in the yield of the 

 crop. I never adopt any new mode of cultivation, however 

 simple or however elaborate, which yields a smaller crop 

 than I now raise, or that does not produce definite results in 

 bushels or pounds. There was a recent communication in an 

 agricultural paper, reporting a yield on one field, with chemical 

 fertilizers, of eighty-two bushels of corn to the acre, at a cost 

 of twenty-seven cents a bushel, and another field of one 

 hundred and fifteen bushels, at a cost of twenty-two cents ; 

 that is all ; no details in the mode of preparing or applying 

 the fertilizers, or manner of cultivating the crop. Now, I 

 will show samples of the corn. This is a sample of the three 

 largest ears of my crop this year, 1875. These ears were 

 fourteen inches long when harvested. They may have short- 

 ened some, for an ear of corn that measures fourteen inches 

 at harvest, Avill shrink one-half an inch or more in drying. 

 There are sixty kernels in a row on these ears, and four hun- 

 dred and eighty on an ear, or four hundred and eighty kernels 

 of yield for one kernel of seed. The weight of these ears is 

 two and a half pounds, ninety-six ears of which will make a 

 bushel of corn at seventy-two pounds of ears to the bushel. 



Here is a sample of the average length of ears of my crop. 

 These ears measure eleven inches lono^. The weiijht of these 

 average ears is one pound and fourteen ounces, requiring one 

 hundred and twenty-five ears to make a bushel of corn. The 

 yield of my crop, from which these samples are taken, is 

 eighty-one bushels and a fraction to the acre. My estimate 

 of the yield was eighty bushels to the acre, before the corn 

 was harvested. My rule for estimating the yield of corn is 

 principally from the length of the longest ears. For example : 

 show me ten of the longest ears from an acre of corn, on 

 which the crop is of even growth on the whole yield, and the 

 average length of ears will be three inches shorter than the 



