DANIEL LEE'S ADDRESS. 383 



this State, no one has made a stronger impression than the 

 quantity of unripe corn to be seen at this season of the year. 

 On warm and sufficiently dry soils, this crop is ripe, and where 

 well cultivated and manured, the yield is from fifty to seventy 

 bushels per acre. This fact proves that your climate is such as 

 demands all the solar heat, available between the late frosts of 

 spring and the early ones of autumn, to produce generous har- 

 vests of this grain. If you had the climate of Kentucky, the 

 same soil would give much larger crops. The agricultural as- 

 sociation of that State awarded its first premium to J. Matson, 

 of Bourbon county, for growing one hundred eighty-nine 

 bushels and one quart per acre, this year. The crop that took 

 the second premium was only one quart less. The third pre- 

 mium was for one hundred and thirty seven and a half bushels. 

 There were nine competitors, and only one produced less than 

 one hundred bushels, and he ninety-eight per acre. These 

 almost incredible results were attained not on single acres, but 

 ten acre fields.* 



Coming as I do from the south, where I have resided three 

 years, the shortness and coolness of your summers strike me very 

 forcibly. If you will study the temperature of different soils, 

 say at the depth of three, six, nine, twelve and fifteen inches, 

 in different months, you may learn from actual experiments, the 

 great disparity in heat that exists between soils that have an 

 excess of moisture and are compact, and those that are permea- 

 ble to warm air and showers. Water that descends over the 

 subsoil, or a stratum of rocks into basins, but not in sufficient 

 quantity to form ponds or quagmires, and only to the degree 

 that makes " wet places," renders the ground very cold by an 

 excess of evaporation. Under-draining, deep and fine tillage, 

 are of the highest importance in this climate, to increase the 

 mean temperature of both the soil and the atmosphere just 

 above it. You must place the earth in a condition to make the 

 most of all the advantages that nature can bring to the aid of 

 your crops. To lose two weeks before ploughing and planting 

 in spring, by permitting ice-water to remain long in the soil to 



* The above statements were not made in the address, but are copied for their general in- 

 '^erest, from ihe Kentucky Statesman, of Oct. 9, 1850. 



