I 



ON INDIAN CORN, ice. 



Whether, in fact, he has judiciously expended these upon the object to be attained. The 

 answer to this question may be in the negative, without necessarily involving in it, any 

 iinpeacliuient of the judgment of tlie agriculturist. For he may have exercised his calling 

 in the matter, witli all the judgment, and in the full exercise of all the knowledge he pos- 

 sesses. W'lierefore, then, it may be asked, is it that the time, labor and capital has not 

 been judiciously emidoyed .' The answer is, it has not been judiciously employed, if, 

 upon a moi-e extended knowledge of the subject, it shall turn out, that if the samz amount 

 of time, labor and capital had been differently applied, it would have yielded a larger re- 

 turn. The idea that the beaten track is the only one that can be followed, is no less in 

 horticultural and agricultural pursuits, than in others, the enemy to progress. For, of 

 what utility is the advance of science, and the discoveries of the chemist, unless they can 

 be praclically applied. The genius of a Fulton, or a Watt, would not have been less 

 worthy of admiration, if prejudice or indolence had refused to appl}' steam to the uses of 

 the manufacturer; nor would the ingenuity of a Stephenson have shown with less bril- 

 liancy if, in order (as some one once gravely proposed) to " keep up the breed of horses," 

 we had refused to be conveyed from New Orleans to Boston by a locomotive engine. But 

 had such follies been committed, the fact could not have been justified to the sound judg- 

 ment of mankind, by a statement that the manufacturer, without his steam engine, got a 

 remunerating profit, or that the journey from one end of the country to the other was 

 performed as speedily as horses could do it. These principles are equally applicable to the 

 horticulturist and to the farmer; and when applied to him, it will be perceived that the 

 natural consequence resulting from them is, that he is lagging behind the manufacturer in 

 intelligence, as well as in solid judgment, unless he takes care to appropriate to his prac- 

 tical use the discoveries made from year to year in the sciences allied to his calling, and 

 varies his course according to their advance in the age in which he lives. 



I have been led into these reflections b}^ the perusal of a paper I met with in turning 

 over the pages of the volume of the Transactions of the American Institute of the city of 

 New-York for 1851, which has just been issued, upon the cultivation of Indian corn, by 

 Mr. JacobP.Giraud, Jr., of Bergen, N.J. In this communication I found that gentleman 

 made, at the commencement of his observations, the remark that "a portion of the land 

 employed " by him, " has, for thelast/our years, been imder cultivation for this exhaust- 

 ing crop." This sentence, added to the intelligence indicated in the writer, by the general 

 character of the paper, induced me to go to the Fair of the Institute, which was at the 

 time open at New-York, to see whether any specimens of corn of the same person's growth 

 were exhibited by him this year. I was gratified that I did so; for I found there a large 

 collection of his, consisting of forty or fifty different varieties of corn, the production, as 

 I was informed, of this very same land that had grown the four preceding crops mentioned 

 in the Transactions referred to. I examined the corn carefully, and I found that the grains 

 were swelled out and full to the end of the cob, showing that there had been no lack of 

 food for the plants; and the ears were very large (in some varieties that I measured 

 the}' were 18 or 20 inches long) and well ripened. Altogether the collection was the most 

 complete and interesting of its nature, that I have ever seen. 



These circumstances induced me to give the matter further consideration, and on turning 

 again to Mr. Giraud's communication in the Transactions of the Institute, I found a refer- 

 ence in it to a paper in the Transactions of a previous year, containing the detail of the 

 system of culture under which these successive crops have been year after 3'ear obtained. 

 In that account I find the statement, that the corn was grown on " clayey loam, an 

 nured in the hill with guano and charcoal, in the proportion of one part of the form 



