LIFE AND WORK AT CORNELL UNIVERSITY 187 



acre, although the soil was too clayey and the 

 climate too cool for the most successful corn 

 culture. 



That first year a field of oats was sown with 

 seed which was already in the granary. The grain 

 ripened early, but did not yield half as much as I 

 thought it should in a climate so well adapted to 

 oat culture as that of western New York. So after 

 harvest, I made a visit to some farms near Ovid, 

 a town about twenty miles down the lake and not 

 far from my boyhood home. Here the oat har- 

 vest was just beginning and the crop was abundant. 

 This was in part attributable to the beech and 

 maple land which was naturally much better 

 adapted for oats than the pine and hemlock lands 

 about Ithaca. The next spring I secured seed from 

 Ovid of these " Dog-tail " oats and the following 

 year the yield per acre on the University Farm was 

 much larger. 



I became acquainted with Jacob Bates, a neigh- 

 boring farmer, who not only had good land but 

 was expert in cultivating it. He was sowing two 

 bushels of oats and one-half bushel of barley 

 mixed, per acre, and made the claim that he had 

 raised one hundred bushels per acre of this mix- 

 ture. I adopted his practice with most successful 



