QUERIES AND ANSWERS. 141 



A. Very valuable for making a white meal ; also excellent for stable 

 use as a feed corn. It is a sort early, bard, a good ripener and a fine 

 keeping variety. All Flint corns are very nutritious, as they contain 

 much oil. 



870. Q. How late can I plant Sugar corn with a reasonable certainty of Sugar Oorn, 

 making a crop of roasting ears — and what is the best variety for this pur- ^*** Planting 

 pose? We have fro^t October 15th to 20th. 



A. The special variety known as Landreths' Sugar corn will mature 

 when planted in the Spring in about eighty days from germination ; but 

 sown for an autumn crop it does not develop so rapidly, as the rainfall 

 and temperature of the nights are not so forcing, the plant taking quite 

 ten or fifteen days more to develop edible ears. In May and June 

 Spring-planted corn grows with great rapidity, but under the cooler 

 nights of September it almost stops growing at night, while early in the 

 year an early crop does nearly all its growing at night. Therefore, to 

 ripen for table by the 15th of October, it will be necessary to plant about 

 the 15th of July. A quicker but smaller sort is the Crosby, which might 

 be planted as late as the 25th of July. 



871. Q. Which is the flower of Indian corn, that on top of the stalk or Tassel 

 that on the end of the ear ? of Com. 



A. Both. That on the top of the stalk, called the tassel, is the male 

 flower ; that at the end of the ear called the silk, is the female. This 

 latter is composed of filaments or long silky hairs extending from each 

 grain to the outside of the husk of the ear; Some of these threads are often 

 eighteen inches long. Each thread or hair has an opening or a mouth to 

 receive the invisible pollen from the male, and unless each thread so re- 

 ceives a grain of pollen no seed possessing a vital germ or full-size will 

 develop on the spot to which the thread is attached. It is estimated that 

 the male flowers orcorn are so fertile in pollea as to produce nine thou- 

 sand pollen grains to each thread of silk — yet only one grain is needed to 

 each thread. 



872. Q. I am too far away from a big town to obtain large quantities Stable 

 of stable manure, and inquire if I can manufacture anything to take its Manure. 

 place ? 



A. Yes ; keep pigs. Keep them in pens, numerous pens, that they can 

 be changed from one to the other ; those adjoining a barnyard not too big, 

 say 30 by 90 feet, with an adjoining field of one to two acres, in which 

 they can run in occasionally for exercise, and while the pens and yards are 

 being cleaned. Do not let them run wild, but keep them in closely de- 

 fined enclosures. Into the barnyard, which should be dished to the 

 centre to hold water, dump all kinds of manure-making material, as 

 straw, corn fodder, weeds, leaves from the woods, swamp muck, saw- 

 dust, anything that will decompose or hold fertilizing liquids. Do not 

 let any of the manurial juices run away. Into the yard dump materials 

 hauled in so that the pigs will tramp them down and root them over and 

 over. Frequently fork them over, and at the end of six months it will be 



