48 IOWA DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



ears of uniform size until we have insured an even-sized grain. If 

 there is any one thing more than another that would conduce to 

 the production of four or five or six bushels to' the acre increase in 

 Iowa next year, it would be the procuring of even-sized grains, 

 because we must depend upon the planter to plant these and it is 

 entirely mechanical. Last year in selecting the seed for a little 

 over 7,000 acres of ground at the Funk Bros. Farm, Bloomings 

 ton, 111., we separated the corn and shelled it by ears; each ear 

 was one by itself. That corn was then laid on a table and, a man 

 who had been trained, examined it, and if there was 

 anything wrong with the grains or the shape was not right, 

 the whole ear was thrown out, for we found that the strength of 

 the corn is peculiar to the ear and not to the grain. For example, 

 if there is four or five grains that — you take four or five grains 

 and test them and find them defective, you can be sure the whole 

 ear is weak, and if you plant rows, an ear in each row and you 

 will see the difference. Even though it may have been in a wet, 

 low place, the strong ears will come up all right, while the weak 

 right by the side on the same ground would suffer. So we threw 

 out the whole ear. 



We found by taking different planters and putting this corn in 

 and testing them by sorting and kept sorting until we would plant 

 19 out of 20 hills three grains. Of course with some of the plant- 

 ers we had to drill in a place or two, but we tried to get the ker- 

 nels uniform with the result that we got over ten bushels to the 

 acre more than was ever produced before, and I attribute it more 

 than any one thing to the fact that grains were of uniform! size, 

 It takes some time to do this, but it pays. It costs just as much 

 to cultivate the ground for seed not thus selected and when you 

 get through you will certainly be surprised to see how greatly they 

 count. 



In regard to the question discussed before, I was interested in 

 it considerably. The matter of discing the ground before plow- 

 ing. For two years I had charge of the growing of about 3,000 

 acres of seed corn and through some accident we discovered that 

 the ground disced before plowing would retain the moisture long- 

 er and finally we went ahead and made several tests, in which we 



