538 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE Off. Doc. 



found that if you get a corn that is adapted to your soil, your cli- 

 matic conditions and the seasons that you have at your disposal 

 for growing corn, when you have such a corn, that is the corn to 

 work on, and every farmer ought to have experience enough to 

 know when he has got that kind of corn. 



The first thing you want is quality. I say that is the first thing, 

 you want to get as much corn and as good corn as you possibly 

 can get on your farm. I said a little while ago that you can develop 

 a corn that is adapted to the soil and climate you have. Last sum- 

 mer, that is only this last year, I had an experience that convinced 

 me more of the truth of the statement I am making now than any- 

 thing that has happened. I had about two bushels of the best seed 

 corn I believe I ever had. The man that I used to work with died 

 last winter, that is this winter a year ago, and I had to get some- 

 body else to work with me on this business, and I went to a fellow 

 whom I knew very well. He said we can do that work on our farm 

 and we have better land than you have over there. That was true. 

 We had ground that was on the Messasoit sand stone. I do not 

 know whether you understand me when I am talking about this, 

 but it is this red soil, we have in York, Lancaster, Chester and 

 Montgomery counties. You know what it is Mr. Sharpless. On that 

 kind of soil we raised the corn, and I say it was good corn. We 

 took that seed corn and planted it on the richest soil in York county 

 and I thought we would get a crop of corn that we could brag about 

 for years, but we didn't for some reason or other that I cannot ex- 

 plain — I am not here to explain — for some reason or other that corn 

 reverted. It went back to its great-great-grandfather, a whole lot 

 of it. Some of it had big cobs, but we didn't have any corn like 

 that, not at all. Some of it was short grains; some of it was not 

 filled out and all that kind of thing; and I cannot blame anything 

 but different soil condition. 



A Member: You planted it in the wrong time of the moon. 



PKOF. MENGES: No, sir, we have gotten away from the moon 

 in York county. Some fellows had it shining around here, but that 

 has not anything to do with our corn. I cannot explain it, but that 

 very corn on the Messasoit sand stone, the red shale, had yielded 

 up to ninety bushels to the acre of shelled corn, the corn I am 

 talking about. Now how did we do it? That is the thing you are 

 interested in, I know. We started out about eight years ago with 

 the improved Leaming corn, but I did not know very much about 

 it then, and I do not know very much about it now. But we started 

 out to select the stock that gave us the very best kind of an ear, 

 and the very best kind of a stock under normal condition. We did 

 not take that stock that stood out there by itself and produced a 

 big ear. You know when you select the large ears out of a lot of 

 corn and don't know what stock it came from you don't know 

 where that stock stood, or what kind of environment it had about 

 it. So we want to know the environment. We want to know whether 

 that stock that produced the large ear did so in an environment 

 where any other stock had grown and produced an ear, and that 

 stock that produced the largest ear and the right kind of an ear, 

 and the right stock, and the right foliage, and the right kind of a 



