224 Singing Valleys 



in the empty hills and prayed for crop enough to keep the 

 wolves at least at baying distance. 



June spent itself in fair warm weather. July brought a long 

 hot spell when the leaves of the corn crackled and rustled as 

 they grew. The tassels shot up straight and proud and in the 

 last week of the month the hoods came off the anthered 

 stamens and the gold dust drifted on the little breeze that 

 rippled the fields. 



On the plants of Gordon Hopkins' corn and on the little 

 yellow corn, too, the young ears stretched greedily from the 

 culms with the soft new silk just protruding from the tips of 

 the ears. Down on the silk fell the golden pollen. Through a 

 whole week the golden rain went on while the corn silk 

 reached out for more and yet more of the life-giving dust. 



August came in with rain and two weeks of hot, damp 

 weather in which the corn seemed to take on fresh life. The 

 ears were swelling fast. Robert Reid went cautiously along 

 the rows and felt the ears with his thumb. His practised hand 

 told him that the rows were well filled, that each green sheath 

 enclosed a vigorous ear. 



The corn which was born that summer in Robert Reid's 

 corn title was destined to become the backbone of America's 

 corn crop. Reid's Yellow Dent corn, with the reddish tinge 

 in some of the kernels which betrays its Gordon Hopkins 

 blood and the small dark red cobs, is grown widely wherever 

 the farmers want a soft starch corn. The ears are nine to ten 

 inches long and seven inches in circumference. The stalks are 

 tall, heavy and leafy, with the ears borne high. 



Also from Ohio comes the variety still called Clarage for 

 Edmund Clarage who developed this strain on his farm in 

 Fayette County during the first years of the nineteenth cen- 

 tury. Ohio, too, was the original home of Learning, a deep 

 yellow variety which has the virtue of maturing early. Learn- 

 ing won the prize at the Paris World's Fair of 1878 and gave 

 American corn an international reputation. 



Yellow corns are richer than the white corns in vitamin A, 



