GOOD SEED — WHEAT. 225 



harrowed; this has the effect nf clestro3dng all the young weeds 

 that are just starting, pulverizing the soil, and letting in the 

 heat and air, thus causing the corn to start with a vigor that 

 remains visible during the entire season. I then first use the 

 cultivator, with narrow shovels set close to the young corn and 

 deep, then follow by frequent plo wings with the larger 

 shovels , keeping the ground thoroughly stirred until the corn 

 is about waist high, and throwing the soil to the corn as much 

 as possible. The last plowing should be done by the fourth of 

 July. I regard the "going through" the corn with hoes, after 

 harvest, and cutting out all remaining weeds, as very important, 

 not only for the purpose of clearing the land of noxious growth 

 that would choke out the yield, but for convenience in getting 

 through the field to harvest the crop. 



WHEAT. 



The yield of wheat in central Illinois, I regard as equal 

 to that of any other State in the same latitude, and think the 

 many failures of this crop are largely, if not altogether attribu- 

 table to a lack of drainage, an insufficient pulverization of the 

 soil, bad seed, and other causes easily controlled by farmers of 

 average intelligence and enterprise. I have raised wheat for 

 the past ten years, during which time I have had but one entire 

 failure ; with that exception, my lowest yield has been thirteen 

 bushels to the acre, and my greatest in the harvest of 1879, 

 which was a fraction over twenty-eight bushels per acre. That 

 season was an unusually favorable one, the yield on some fields 

 in this locality being as high as forty-one bushels per acre. My 

 cleared land, the soil of which is a dark clay loam is better, I 

 think, for the production of wheat, than is the prairie soil : al- 

 though I haYe had good success with the latter on clover sod, 

 or land on which the corn has been "Hogged" down — a field 

 on which there has been an early crop of corn, into which 

 there has been at once turned a sufficient number of hogs 

 to eat it, which leaves the ground slightly packed by breaking 

 down all the stalks. If there should be stumps on the ground, 

 as is the case on some of my newly cleared land, which pre- 

 15 



