76 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



tinct in the form of its kernels from the others ; and, when 

 I came to look at it, I found that nearly half of those kernels 

 were shrivelled kernels ; that is, they have the form of 

 sweet-corn ; and, if you pick one out and bite it, you will 

 find that it is sweet-corn. You will say that that was fer- 

 tilized by sweet-corn pollen. I tell you " No." These ears 

 grew side by side, on the same hill. You would pick one of 

 those ears (I have a great many of them), with part of the 

 kernels large and full, and part of them shrivelled, and you 

 would also pick from the same hill one of these ears of pure 

 rice-corn. How do I account for that ? This rice-corn, last 

 year happened to grow in a part of my garden where the 

 pollen of some sweet-corn was wafted over on to it ; and 

 that pollen of sweet-corn fertilized the seeds. But the 

 mother-plant was so strong, that the pollen did not change 

 the color, and did not change the form of the seeds : they 

 remained exactly the same in form and color as those fer- 

 tilized by their own pollen. But the next year, when I came 

 to plant this corn, then it produced a form that showed that 

 poison, if I may use the word " poison " in this connection ; 

 that is, showed the influence of the pollen that fertilized the 

 kernel the year before. Now, here is an ear that was pro- 

 duced from that little rice-corn from the effect of a grain of 

 pollen fertilizing one of those kernels the year before. 



If our corn is so sensitive as this to every grain of pollen 

 which falls upon it, and if we cannot tell, by looking at a 

 kernel, by what sort of pollen it was fertilized, it seems to 

 me that we have much to learn in regard to the production 

 of seed-corn. 



Here is an ear that was raised by my friend Hon. Asahel 

 Foote (many of you know him), a very shrewd observer. 

 He brought this to me as a new thing. But it is exactly the 

 same thing that I had raised in my own garden ; that is, it 

 illustrates the same principle. He says, "Last year I had 

 some corn growing near some sweet-corn, and I used some of 

 it for seed-corn ; and, behold, this year, although I planted, 

 as I supposed, fine, plump corn, here I have ears with clusters 

 of two, three, four, and five kernels of sweet-corn mixed in 

 with the others. There was no sweet-corn, that I know of, 

 within half a mile of it this year. These sweet kernels are 

 the effect of the sweet-corn pollen that fertilized that corn 

 last year." 



