SUCCESSFUL CORN CULTURE. 187 



During the years 1877 and '78 hay did not pay the cost of pro- 

 duction. This fact caused many of our farmers to plow up 

 their meadows and turn their attention to other crops. As a 

 natural result, hay, in the Fall of '79, brought $18 to $20 per 

 ton in that market. This crop, grown and taken from the 

 farm, year after year, is very exhausting to the soil, but if 

 mixed with clover, the yield is greater, and the drain much 

 less, but the price of the hay is materially lessened also. I 

 shall, however, hereafter grow mixed hay, as it is undesirable 

 to draw so heavily on the reserve fund of the soil—a fund that 

 should be carefully husbanded for future use. 



H. K. MARSTON, 



ONARGA, IROQUOIS COUNTY. 



Successful Corn Culture — How Twelve Thousand Bushels of 

 Corn ivere raised from One Hundred and Sixty Acres — 

 Culture of Small Fruit. 



There is an old saying, " He is the benefactor of his race, 

 who causes two blades of grass to grow where one grew 

 before." I believe this applies, with equal force, to him who 

 produces two bushels of corn where one was grown before. 

 While it is eminently proper to encourage a love of esthetics 

 in our farmers, to urge them to beautify their homes, to 

 provide picturesque as well as comfortable shelter for their 

 children, and their cattle, yet, as "money makes the mare go," 

 large yields of the fruits of the earth are at the bottom of 

 agricultural prosperity ; and as it is impossible for me, within 

 the limits of a short article, to construct an elaborate treatise 

 on agriculture in all its various departments, I propose to con- 

 fine myself to the cultivation of our great staple — Indian corn. 



I remember a valuable lesson that I was taught by a 

 neighbor move than twenty years ago. We were both com- 

 paratively young, and had just opened new farms on the virgin 

 prairie. We had all the land we could use, and employed no 



