CULTIVATION OF CORN. 245 



periments. If you will take common green pease, which 

 you are ready to gather for your table, and plant them, 

 those pease will grow, and those plants will probably give 

 you, on the average, earlier pease than will the ripe seed 

 from those same plants. If you will take the seed of a 

 green tomato, — a tomato half grown, — and take the seed of 

 a tomato which has ripened upon the same plant, you may 

 find, as we have this year, a difference of fifteen or more 

 days in earliness between the plants grown from the green 

 seed and those grown from the ripe seed. If you will take 

 the green seed of beets, — the unripe seed, — and plant those, 

 you will find, perhaps, a gain of from six to eight days of 

 earliness between the product of the unripe seed and the ripe 

 seed. If you will take thoroughbred corn, of a known con- 

 stant character, and take a boiling ear of this corn, or one a 

 little too green for the table, and plant the seeds, some will 

 grow ; and those seeds, for two years running, have given us 

 earlier corn than the same seed picked ripe. We have gone 

 through a dozen different vegetables and the experiments all 

 tend one way. They show that by using unripe seed we 

 can get increased earliness in our plants. 



But 3^ou must remember that these green seeds will give 

 you feebler plants. If the idea is a true one that you can 

 attain earliness in this way, it may be necessary to use ripe 

 seed from the plants grown from the unripe seed, in order to 

 get back again the vigor of the plant, which is of very great 

 importance in our horticulture. There is simply one idea 

 thrown out on this point in regard to earliness. 



Now, there is another idea in regard to corn which is still 

 better than the one suggested in the experiments. If you 

 will go through a hundred varieties of corn planted together, 

 you will find that the distance of the car from the ground is 

 in almost constant relation to the earliness of the crop. It 

 seems always so when you use pure seed. There is a sort 

 of catch-all or waste basket anions; seedsmen which catches 

 every variety of sweet corn which is not named, and it 

 is sold under the name of eiijht-rowed sweet. When a 

 seedsman wants to get a new variety, he can go to that waste 

 basket, pick out an ear and put it on the market as a new 

 variety of eight-rowed corn, and thus give his place a repu- 

 tation as a place where you can always go and get something 



