116 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



price. I do not raise it under the most favorable conditions, 

 because I am not able to cultivate it myself ; I am obliged to 

 trust that to others and pay them for it. I am certain, it is a 

 matter of demonstration, that my corn has cost me but forty- 

 five cents a bushel. In raising corn, or in raising any crop 

 (I am only repeating a truism that you will all agree to) we 

 want to get the most out of a small piece of ground we can. 

 There is the secret of profitable farming. If you get a hun- 

 dred bushels of corn from an acre, of course you get it at much 

 less cost than if that hundred bushels were produced from three 

 or five acres. I have a field of ten acres, which I intend to 

 plant with corn next year. I do not intend to apply to it a hoe 

 in any form. I am going to see if corn cannot be raised with- 

 out the application of a hoe, and without the application of any 

 manure, except such as I shall provide, of the description which 

 I have given here to-day. I think that I shall be able to show, 

 as I have been showing, that corn is a profitable crop to raise in 

 Massachusetts. I do not see any reason why we should not 

 plant corn. 



Allow me to say a word in relation to corn fodder. I believe 

 our good friend, Dr. Loring, has been somewhat sharply criticised, 

 in regard to his remarks about corn fodder. I think the doctor is 

 partly right, and perhaps partly wrong. I have made some 

 experiments, the past two or three years, and especially this 

 year, with corn fodder, and I find that corn fodder sown broad- 

 cast is perfectly worthless. I demonstrated that practically by 

 experiments upon my herd of cows, and I demonstrated it pos- 

 itively by an analysis of the plant. The results of my obser- 

 vations and researches, up to the present time, have been these : 

 that in raising fodder corn, we must allow it to reach a certain 

 point before we cut it. In the first place, we must sow it in 

 drills ; it must have access to sunlight and air, and it must be 

 allowed to proceed to a certain stage, — and that stage is the 

 formation of the ear, — before we begin to cut it. Corn fodder 

 fed to animals before that period will not increase the milk ; 

 and if the corn is sown broadcast, you may take your cows from 

 a very poor pasture and keep them upon that fodder, and they 

 will fall off in the supply of milk. The practical deduction 

 from this is, that we must sow our corn, the sweet variety, in 

 drills, and not sow it too thick, and we must sow as many as 



