FIFTH ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART I. 



71 



growing. To the farmer who grows corn for the grain alone these barren 

 stalks are worse than a complete loss. They not only deprive the pro- 

 ductive stalks of food, moisture and light but they produce polen which 

 fertilizes the silks of the good stalks and so reduces the vigor and future pro- 

 ducing power of many of the good ears. Nubbins are simply a mild form 

 of barrenness. 



This subject of barren stalks is very closely related to that of "The Pro- 

 duct of a Sin.2:le Hill." (See Fig. 14.) 



:;■ .M 



\^J. 



This cut gives an illustration of the class of stalks which produce the 

 nubbins, or what is worse, nothing at all. The unproductive stalks in 

 these two hills have hundreds of brothers scattered here and there through- 

 out the field wherever th-e kernels from the ear that produced them were 



