THIRD ANNUAL YEAR BOOK — PART II. 53 



pieces; when, instead of having three to three and a quarter ears 

 on an average, we have two. On two hundred and fifty acres 

 out in our fields, we found that during the season just before it 

 began to show the joints, the stalks were very tender, and a heavy 

 wind would break off a great deal of the corn, and that in certain 

 rows the stalks were vigorous, and none of them in the whole 

 eighty rods were broken, and in another right by the side of it 

 there would probably be a third or a quarter of them broken off. 

 And another thing, we found in some of those row?, there was a 

 great difference in the strength of the kernels ; the grain was uni- 

 form throughout the ear. It is rot always so. Sometimes we find 

 one or two kernels very weak, that were started behind the others 

 and remained behind all the year, and were overshadowed ; and 

 there is where the barren stalks come in. And the thing that ap- 

 peals to us most in our work seems to be the need of strong, vig- 

 orous, even corn-branch. 



I would have been very glad to have had some suggestions 

 myself. But I can say this; that the only thing is for us to take 

 these and experiment with them and help them over, as we are 

 here. It seems to me it would aid more than any other one thing 

 in this corn matter (and we all know that corn lies at the very 

 foundation of our prosperity, as well as the success of every in- 

 dustry in this state), if we could have an appropriation sufficient 

 to carry on experiments throughout the state. Xow, as the gen- 

 tlemen said, corn that has given excellent results in the southern 

 districts will not give best results in the northern part of the state. 

 In Illinois we found about one hundred miles made a great differ- 

 ence in the adaptability of corn, and we ought to co-operate with 

 these men to know what variety is going to give the best results 

 in any particular district. Men in portions of Illinios have year 

 after year gone on raising corn that yielded 50 per cent of what 

 might be raised, and yet, they supposed they had the greatest corn 

 in the whole state. But a great change has come over the condi- 

 tion of things there owing to this study that has been given to the 

 corn question and those varieties that are yielding so small a per- 

 centage, just like the condition of trying to make a big animal out 

 of the Jersey and the Hereford. We do not want a variety in the 



