FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART I. 69 



No. 2 is an illustration of a deep, long-kerneled corn on a small cob. 

 Such a corn would naturally be adapted only to the southern districts. Its 

 germ, while longer, is not so full or strong as that of No. 1. A kernel so 

 long and thin is always difficult to plant because the ordinary planter is 

 made for the average kernel and not for exceptionally long ones and, there- 

 fore, special care will need to be taken to properly adjust the plates so as to 

 drop the desired number of kernels. Kernels of this formation are inclined 

 to be chaffy and late in maturing. The proportion of corn to cob is rather 

 too great, A small cob is desirable, but if it is carried to the extreme it 

 becomes a source of weakness rather than of strength. We can no more 

 reasonably hope to produce an abnormally high percentage of corn to cob 

 than we can to produce large ears on weak, sickly stalks. There is a proper 

 relation or proportion existing between the weight of corn and the weight of 

 cob, and if we develop the corn at the expense of the cob, weakness and 

 loss of constitution will result. While the proportion of corn to cob varies 

 with different varieties it would appear that 86-87 per cent is about the right 

 proportion to give best results. 



No. 3 is a more normal ear and shows better relations between corn and 

 cob. The kernels are of medium length, good shape and possess strong, 

 vigorous germs. The crown is not rough, which, taken with the medium 

 depth kernel, would indicate that it was a medium early corn, such as would 

 be suitable for the central districts of the corn belt. 



No. 4 shows very short kernels with poor, weak germs. This ear would 

 yield a very low percentage of corn to cob. 



PRODUCT OF A SINGLE HILL. 



Fig 14 illustrates what is loo often seen in a single hill — a good ear, a poor 

 ear and a nubbin. We have seen this so often that we never stop to think 

 what it means. Why do not all these stalks bear ears like No. 3? Being in 

 the same hill, the conditions of soil, climate and moisture must have been 

 exactly the same. Oae could not have received more thorough cultivation 

 than another. From the time the corn was dropped there was no good 

 reason who Nos. 1 and 2 should not be as good as No. 3. Why, then, is 

 there this wide variation? Can we do anything to bring Nos. 1 and 2 up to 

 the standard set by No. 3? We can. The difference in yield of these three 

 ears was not due to differences in soil, climate or cultivation. The difference 

 lay behind all this — it lay in the character of the parents planted. If we 

 could locate all the stalks in the field which spring from the brothers of the 

 kernal that produced No. 2 we would find that the great majority of them 

 were ears, on an average, as good as it is. The same thing would hold true 

 in the case of the parents of No. 1 and No. 3. This would lead us to the 

 conclusion that the difference in these three ears is due to the difference in the 

 producing power of their parents. 



In our study of individual ears we saw the wide variation in the yield 

 which different ears produced. We saw that while one ear yielded 90 bush- 

 els per acre, another ear beside it, which had exactly the same conditions, 

 produced only 36 bushels. Some ears produced twelve times as many bar- 

 ren stalks as others and the same held true with the broken stalks. Now if 

 we can select the ear which gives the large ear-producing stalks and leave out 

 the one which produces the small ear and the one which produces the nub- 



