SELECTING SEED CORN. 



WORK FOR JULY AND AUGUST. 



(Republished June, 1910.) 



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 

 themselves 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 

 embryo (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 pro- 

 duce 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 vsa-iter, 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 dif- 

 ferent 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 



