Corn Growers' Associatio7i. 13>3 



the different ears of corn. Take a number of equally good appear- 

 ing ears, if you please, like those splendid specimens, the ten cham- 

 pion ears of the recent National Corn Exposition, illustrated in 

 figure 1 ; such ears as satisfy all our notions of perfection in corn, 

 including proper proportion of length to circumference, size, 

 form, shape of kernels, proportion of grain to cob and so on 

 through the ordinary score-card points; put these ears to a per- 

 "formance test in the field, make them show up their yielding quali- 

 ties, and it may be that you will find that some ears out-yield 

 the others by two to one. There is no way of discovering this 

 difference in productiveness from the appearance. We must put 

 them to the actual test in the field — such a test as is given in the 

 "ear-to-the-row" breeding plot. 



Extreme variations of this sort are not uncommon in our 

 breeding plots, but an instance occurred a number of years ago 

 which was especially interesting from the fact that a good e-^r 



Figure 3. — Row No. 12 and row No. 13 at the harvest time. 



and a poor ear happened to be planted side by side in adjoining 

 rows, thus making the comparison especially striking. Figure 2 

 shows the condition of the two rows planted from these two ears 

 as they grew in the field, and figure 3 tells us the result of the 

 harvest of these same two rows. There was nothing in the appear- 

 ance of the seed ears to indicate that row 13 would produce more 

 than twice as much as row 12. 



EFFECT OF SELECTION UPON CHEMICAL CHARACTERS OF THE GRAIN. 



Corn improvement should embrace quality as well as quantity. 

 No other crop is made to serve such a variety of purposes as 

 corn, and in consideration of these many different uses is sug- 

 gested the question of special adaptation. 



Purpose of Increasing the Protein. — In the nutrition of man 

 and beast, protein is the most expensive nutrient. Of all our 

 American food-stuffs corn is the cheapest, because of its economi- 

 cal production. But because corn does not contain sufficient pro- 



