SELECTING SEED CORN. 



WORK FOR JULY AND AUGUST. 



Corn is the basis of farm operations in this State. That it is more 

 profitable for the farmer to produce a sufficient supply on his farm 

 than to raise other crops, from the receipt of sales of which to pur- 

 chase it, is generally admitted. Usually the farmer who has corn to 

 sell each year has money to lend, and the farmer who buys corn each 

 season to run his farm generally wishes to borrow money to pay 

 for it. The Department of Agriculture desires to induce the farmers 

 to recognize these evident facts, which have so vividly impressed them- 

 selves upon our history, and thus emerge from the condition of debt 

 and humiliation, so common among them, by producing at least the 

 corn needed upon each farm. 



In 1897 the farmers in the "Corn Belt," as it is generally called — 

 viz., Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Kansas and Iowa — realized 

 that the production of corn per acre was hardly half what it was 

 twenty years prior thereto. The agricultural associations began an 

 investigation of the subject, and afterwards corn growers' associations 

 were formed in each State to consider solely the subject of the produc- 

 tion of seed corn. 



This paper is intended to present some of the developments along 

 this line, as shown by their conclusions. Every grain of corn in em- 

 bryo (at first) produces a strand of silk, which comes through the 

 shuck at the end of the ear. In order to complete this grain some of 

 the pollen or dust from a corn tassel must get on this silk and convey 

 its vitality to the grain. If this is not done, the grain shrivels and 

 fails to be perfected. The stalk from which the pollen is received de- 

 termines in a large measure the kind of grain produced. The ear is 

 the mother, the tassel the father of the grain of corn. As in the case of 

 animals, it was seen that a good type or basis was necessary to produce 

 a desired individual, and that there must be a recognized ear of corn 

 as the example of what was desired. Many of the readers of this 

 paper, like the writer, have selected seed corn every year— some for 

 near fifty years. But to-day, while the corn in their cribs may be all 

 sound and marketable, there are a dozen or perhaps twenty different 

 types. One of these is best, or perhaps combining two into a new type 

 would be better. The associations fixed on certain types and have bred 

 to them. The small grains (wheat, oats and rye) brought into this 

 State from the Middle States generally give the best crop the first 

 season, but deteriorate in a few years. This has been the experience 



