41 



following which the feeble struggle against adverse conditions 

 is over and the plant dies. Occasionally such a diseased plant 

 may survive long enough to produce something of an ear, but 

 this is unusual. 



Just what these adverse conditions are in a region of favorable 

 temperature, sufficient moisture, plenty of sunshine and appar- 

 ently good soil is still something of an unsolved problem. The 

 leaf hopper is undoubtedly a big factor, for stunted plants are 

 almost invariably covered with leaf hoppers, but whether the 

 hoppers are the primary cause or merely come on after the plant 

 has been weakened by other causes is still unknown. The work 

 at the college has been along the line of trying out various 

 varieties of corn from different parts of the world, and among 

 these varieties some seed corn obtained from Cuba has given 

 by far the most promising results. The results of tests of dif- 

 ferent corn varieties is briefly given below. 



JUNE CORN. 



This corn was obtained from Mr. Ernest Romberg of Mul- 

 doon, Texas, where it is locally known as June corn. Mr. Rom- 

 berg reported that it matures in 110 days in Texas, and that it 

 is probably of Mexican origin. It is a white dent corn with 

 some ears showing decidedly flinty characteristics. The ears 

 averaged 84.79r kernels. The corn was planted December 30 

 and harvested April 23, making the time of maturing 114 days. 

 Some stalks grew to a height of 6 feet, but many were only 

 two feet tall, and showed the peculiar characteristics described 

 above as being common to most corn belt varieties when grown 

 on the lowlands of Hawaii. The yield was very poor — only 11.8 

 bushels on an acre basis. The husks have a great tendency to 

 open before the corn is harvested, which results in many of the 

 ears being infested with the larva of the grain weevil while still 

 in the field, in addition to the loss due to birds eating the ex- 

 posed tips of the ears. The leaf hoppers were not particularly 

 abundant on this field, probably due to the good work of the 

 300 leaf hopper parasites liberated in this field on January 25 

 by Mr. E. M. Ehrhorn and Mr. D. T. Fullaway of* the Board 

 of Agriculture and Forestry. 



While this variety of corn can not be considered a success 

 from this test the fact remains that it proved better than any- 

 thing else we tried with the exception of the Cuban and Guam 

 varieties to be reported later. 



NEW ERA YELLOW DENT CORN. 



This corn was developed and grown with a great deal of suc- 

 cess by Mr. F. G. Krauss at a substation of the Hawaii Agri- 

 cultural Experiment Station located at Haiku. Maui, at an ele- 

 vation of about 600 feet. 



