218 Missouri Agricultural Report. 



better varieties than you now have. But here is a chance to make seri- 

 ous mistakes : You come up here to the corn show, see a fine exhibit of 

 corn that has won first prize, and you think that first prize is a pretty 

 nice thing — some honor connected with it. And you think further, that 

 if you had some of that corn on your farm you could increase your 

 yields and possibly win some prizes yourself. Well, now that may be 

 true, but the chances are, it is not. I would go slow. Corn must be 

 adapted to the locality where it is to be grown. You send 200 or 500 

 miles away for corn or sometimes you get it in the same county, but 

 grown under very different conditions than your own — perhaps on a 

 rich bottom land when you have a thin upland. Corn changed in this 

 way will result disastrously, as a rule. I presume your Station here 

 makes some such tests as we do. We gather corn from all over the 

 country and bring it to the Station and plant it side by side. We send 

 to Kansas every year and get some of their best corn, and we send to 

 Illinois to some good breeder of Reid's Yellow Dent and get some fresh 

 seed, and then we come nearer and nearer home picking up corn. As 

 we plant this corn side by side, and what we find, is this: That the 

 varieties we bring from farthest away from home do the poorest. We 

 will get a great growth of fodder but very poor, wet corn. In the case 

 of the corn brought in from Kansas we found that in every 100 pounds 

 of the corn we have 33 pounds of water. Now we are not growing corn 

 for water. We are growing it for the dry matter there is in it. And 

 the nearer we came home with the different varieties the more dry matter 

 we found in 100 pounds of corn, and the better the yield, too. And this 

 corn that was brought from a distance, even after thoroughly drying out 

 the following spring, was not first class corn then. When we tested it we 

 found it tested only 49 pounds per bushel, when it ought to have tested 

 ' 55 or 56 pounds according to our standard. So you see that while it 

 is possible for a good many of us to improve yields we have got to use 

 great caution. Consult your Experiment Station and your State Board 

 of Agriculture and make your changes with care. Some man has a pretty 

 good variety of corn but it does not quite suit him — possibly it is a 

 little too late or a little too early to suit him. We can take these varie- 

 ties that do not quite fit our conditions and make them over with a 

 little careful selection. If I had my chart here I would show you the 

 variation we found in these different varieties we brought in from all 

 over the country, the variation in yield, in test per bushel; then I 

 would show you the variation which we found in 50 ears of corn, all 

 of one variety, and would you believe that we found in many eases 

 greater variation in these 50 ears, all of one variety and all grown in one 



