330 Singing Valleys 



long cooking and extremely high temperatures required in the 

 canning process destroy some of the corn flavor and toughen 

 the kernels. Just the same, among the canned vegetables, 

 tomatoes lead in popularity, with peas and corn running neck 

 and neck for second place. The varieties most in use for can- 

 ning are Evergreen and Country Gentleman, though there is 

 a steadily growing demand for canned Golden Bantam. Farm- 

 ers "down East" are raising the yellow sweet corns for the can- 

 neries and making good profits at it. 



There seems to be a nice justice in Nature. New England 

 lost her sons to the corn belt. New England propagated the 

 first sweet corn, and New England produced the most popular 

 variety of sweet corn ever marketed. In recent years New Eng- 

 land farmers have received higher prices for their sweet corn 

 than the corn belt farmers got for theirs. True, it cost them 

 more to raise the crop. They had to manure the fields heavily. 

 But the manure and the labor won them a profit on land that 

 would otherwise be profitless. Maine, with fewer than fifteen 

 thousand acres of sweet corn under cultivation in 1935, har- 

 vested fifty thousand tons, in the ear. This was as many as 

 New York farmers raised on twenty-one thousand acres, and 

 almost as many as Ohio got from a twenty-six-thousand acre- 

 age. Too, that Maine-grown sweet corn was worth $16.50 per 

 ton. This price was $6 more than sweet corn brought in New 

 York, and twice what the Ohio farmers got for theirs. 



America's annual sweet-corn crop which goes to the can- 

 neries and commercial markets runs to over eight hundred 

 thousand tons. How much more is eaten where it is raised 

 there is no way of knowing. With such a market for the vege- 

 table it is no wonder that the scientists who experimented 

 with hybridizing field corns should have turned their attention 

 to the creation of hybrid sweet corns too. 



The best hybrid sweet corns are the result of a single cross. 

 That is, they are made from two inbred lines of the same 

 variety. That is the story behind the hybrid "Golden Cross" 

 which has been bred from crossing two inbred strains of 



