FARM EXPERIMENTS AT LAKESIDE. 117 



dred days in which to plant and harvest our corn ; 

 that of 1870 was of extraordinary length, the warm 

 growing weather lasting from early in April to 

 November. It has been a period of great value to 

 those who wish to gain by experiment and obser- 

 vation a knowledge of the best methods of farming 

 under the extremes of heat and cold, wet and dry, 

 and of the crops best suited to our capricious cli- 

 mate. The farmer who, by imperfect tillage and 

 lazy habits, has reached the conclusion that we in 

 New England have no certain crops, is indulging 

 in grievous error. All our cereal and grass crops 

 are certain enough if our fields are in perfect con- 

 dition, but corn may be said never to fail if a rea- 

 sonable amount of attention is given it. My crop 

 has never fallen below seventy bushels of shelled 

 corn to the acre, and in 1869 I grew, in about one 

 hundred days, a crop of one hundred and six bushels 

 to the acre. So late was this season that on the 

 10th of April I was able to walk across the ice- 

 bound lake upon which my fields border, and snow 

 rested on my potato patch the 2d day of May. 

 Corn, among crops with us in Massachusetts, is like 

 a Bronsonian Democrat; it rises "superior to its 

 accidents." The crop at Lakeside in 1870, hot 

 and parched as the season was, reached seventy- 

 five bushels to the acre. The cost of the corn in 

 the aggregate, raised during the seven seasons, does 



