THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART II. 49 



tested, I suppose, with the disc about five or six hundred acres 

 out of 3,000, and in every case the disced ground went through 

 the dry weather better than the plowed land. 



Mr. E. T. St. John : Mr. Chairman : I am' much interested 

 in your paper, and greatly interested in what Prof. Holden has 

 told us in regard to securing a good stand of corn and the impor- 

 tance of good seed. All I know about seed corn is from practical 

 knowledge on my farm; and I know this, that I have made the 

 same mistakes in northern Iowa, for the first time, that a great 

 many of our people in our part of the state have made, and that 

 is, trying to raise too large corn. I know some of my neighbors 

 raised good, big, nice corn and I thought I would raise some and 

 improve a little on the size of it in my county, and I discarded my 

 corn that I had been raising, that had been adapted to this soil, 

 and I made the mistake of my life. Some of it is sound and the 

 rest of it is cheap and soft. But I took the precaution to go back 

 to the old plan used when I was a boy, of going into the field and 

 selecting my seed corn and tying it up and drying it — putting it 

 in a good sunny place and letting it be dried thoroughly. I took 

 the precaution not to gather that corn where there were barren 

 stalks. Some say it is in the soil ; some say it is in fertilizing the 

 polen that is the cause of these (things. Let it be as frt may, I 

 think it would be a good thing in selecting the corn to avoid doing 

 so around those barren stalks ; and, as has been said here in the 

 discussion, select even kernels, well-formied ears and those which 

 are the most mature, and this year has been a grand one to exper- 

 iment on that, and I believe that next year I can say to this con- 

 vention I mil make no mistake ; I will have a good stand of corn. 

 It is true that if we miss a good stand, we miss a great part of 

 the product of the farm. So that matter of having good seed 

 corn is a very important one. 



Mr. Waller : Mr. Chairman : This question of seed corn is one 

 that is paramount to anything else,, and I might say, everything 

 else in the state of Iowa, because it is virtually our crop. And 

 while I endorse almost everything the gentlman said on this, I do 

 thing that sometimes we are mistaken. Now, I might say it has 

 been my misfortune to plant a large variety of corn this year. I 



