GKAIN AND GRASS SEED. 153 



constitution of the cob, which makes it so harsh and indigesti- 

 ble as feed, make these varieties objectionable ; and this 

 leads us to prefer the eight-rowed corn, with its small stem, 

 easily husked and dried, and its small cob, which grinds into 

 comparatively soft meal, while its large store of alkali meets 

 in a measure the wants of the milch cow, and all animals 

 whose bones are growing, or need sustaining, from a lack of 

 phosphate of lime in their feed. 



Cultivation has much to do with the quality of seed-corn. 

 As well think of raising healthy, robust oflfspring from sickly, 

 debilitated parents, as to look for seed of full vitality on sickly, 

 stunted stalks, reared on ground illy prepared and illy culti- 

 vated. Let the land be well ploughed and pulverized ; let 

 your manure not be covered up at the bottom of a deep fur- 

 row, at a depth where your fence-post would remain sound 

 for twenty years ; but let it be well mixed with the soil in the 

 pulverizing process, near the surface, where your stakes and 

 posts so soon rot. There you have all the elements, — God's 

 skilful agents at work preparing your manure for plant-food. 

 But these agents do not go down deep in the earth to rot 

 your fence-posts. Why should they to work over your 

 manure ? 



Planting has much to do with the vitality of the seed. No 

 farmer expects to raise seed-corn in a field sowed for fodder. 

 Why not? It is too thick. Well, when there are many 

 stalks in the field, with no ears, or when there is but one ear 

 upon a stalk, and that not filled out, the corn is still too 

 thick ; or there are too mau}^ stalks in a hill. Our opinion 

 is, that three feet between the rows, and four feet between 

 the hills, and three and four stalks in a hill, will exhaust the 

 laud less, for the number of bushels raised per acre, than 

 to stock heavier. One good, well-capped ear on every stalk, 

 and two and three on many, should be the standard aimed at 

 by every fiirmer, and he should vary his planting and improve 

 his cultivation till he attains to it. No field of corn, choked 

 and shaded and robbed of nutriment by a swamp of weeds, 

 can yield the first quality of seed. Corn should be timely 

 and well hoed, and we think corn well hoed when the weeds 

 are all killed, and the ground made light and as near level as 

 possible. When the soil is level, the roots instinctively spread 



20* 



