324 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



at corn shows. The commercial side is now uppermost with the 

 corn growers. The work of our organization, due, largely, to the 

 untiring efforts of our worthy Secretary and the Hon. Geo. B. Ellis, 

 has been of untold value to the corn growers of our State. Im- 

 proved seed is now being purchased by most all the progressive 

 farmers, and no dealer or grower can afford to ship a customer 

 inferior seed, and we would discourage the buying of shelled seed 

 by our farmers, and now members of the Association, while we 

 may not have attained the high standard, to which we had desired 

 one year ago, let us not be discouraged, but let us take up the work 

 of this session with renewed energy, realizing that we have im- 

 proved the quality and increased the yield; yet are the people 

 hungering for more corn and better corn. 



IMPROVING THE CORN CROP BY SELECTION AND 



BREEDING. 



(Prof. O. G. Williams, of the Ohio Agricultural Experiment Station. ) 



One seeking to improve his corn crop will quite naturally set 

 about it in one of two ways : First, by improving the conditions 

 under which the crop is grown — the environment; second, by tak- 

 ing advantage of the inherent superiority of One variety, strain or 

 individual plant over another. 



Environment may be classified as natural or artificial. Nature 

 has been very generous with her store of fertility, her midsummer 

 heat and rainfall in the so-called corn belt of the United States. 

 The price of these corn belt lands would seem to indicate that some 

 com growers, at least were disposed to improve their corn yields 

 by taking advantage of these bounties of nature. So far as the 

 conditions of fertility are concerned we would not expect much 

 variation from year to year, but in temperature and rainfall nature 

 is not uniformly kind, as witness the average yield of corn in the 

 seven corn states in 1901, as compared with 1902 — an increase in 

 yield in 1902 of almost exactly 100 per cent. Until some corn 

 expert desires to appropriate this great interstate increase as a 

 result of his teaching we will perhaps be at liberty to credit it 

 to nature. 



Environment is mighty in so far as the corn crop is concerned. 

 It is not confined to nature either. Man steps forward, and by 

 crop rotation, by fertilization and manuring, by the use of legumes, 



