6 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



worms do bother until sometimes up to the 20th of June. They 

 have bothered us in years gone by. I think this is the exper- 

 ience of most of you on this question. 



The President : The next paper is entitled, "The Time to 

 Select Seed Corn, and Care of Same," by Hon, John Cownie. 

 Prefatoiy to reading his paper, ]\Ir. Cownie said : 



^^'hen I was invited by the Secretary of the State Board of 

 Agriculture to prepare a paper on the care of seed corn, I was 

 only too well pleased to accept the invitation. This subject has 

 been discussed of late years, and more attention has been given to 

 it than I have known in all my residence in Iowa, and I am 

 pleased to know that at least some interest is being taken in this 

 most vital subject. But at the same time, so much has been 

 written in regard to it that has been erroneous, that a great deal 

 of good that otherwise would have been done has not resulted. 

 Newspaper reporters who never did a day's work on the farm 

 and who know nothing whatever of the actual conditions, get a 

 few inklings from attending addresses, and they write great, 

 long articles upon the subject which have no semblance to truth- 

 fulness whatever ; not a particle. Although our reporters are no 

 worse than those of other states, only a year ago, a reporter 

 whose name and reputation is world-wide, representing one of 

 the Chicago papers, came into Iowa to deliver a course of lec- 

 tures, and incidentally to write his impressions of the state in 

 his paper. He had been at Shenandoah. I suppose some far- 

 mer told him this, and he wrote it up. The substance of it was, 

 that a great discovery had been made in Iowa; that heretofore, 

 the farmers had been cutting their clover and timothy for hay, 

 but of late years, they were saving all their timothy for seed, for 

 the reason that they found the hay was equally as good after the 

 seed was taken out as it would be to leave it in and mow it at the 

 proper time. He gave all the reasons for this, and I have no 

 doubt, some farmer gave him the thought. You and I, who have 

 raised timothy seed and threshed it, and put up clover and timothy 

 hay in the early part of July, know better. There isn't a cow in 

 the state of Iowa that would believe such nonsense; there isn't 

 a six months old calf but what knows better. 



