CULTIVATIOX OF CORN. 241 



the "Agriculture of Massachusetts" upon corn. Now, 

 whether I contradict myself or not I do not care, because it 

 is the part of science to follow facts, to follow truth, to 

 speak your best knowledge of to-day Avithout regard to any 

 knowledge that you may have put upon record yesterday. 

 I may say that corn has occupied a good deal of my atten- 

 tion. I have given it most careful study now for a long 

 period of time. I have, as j^et, attained to scarcely any 

 real knowledge upon it ; but I have found about corn some 

 facts which, I think, can be accepted, and which will stand 

 the test of time. Some of these facts, if I had been told 

 them a year or two years ago, I should have declared mani- 

 festly impossible, and should have looked upon them as the 

 utterances of a monomaniac rather than of one who had 

 knowledge. So, if I speak upon this matter a little differ- 

 ently from what may seem to be your experience, I hope 

 you will have a little patience with me. 



I shall have to approach this question in a somewhat 

 roundabout way. One of the things which you may con- 

 sider as proven about corn is, that each variety has certain 

 habits which apply to that variety and do not apply to 

 others. For instance, if we plant Adams's Early Dent corn, 

 and if we plant Chester County Mammoth corn, as illustra- 

 tions, we have in one case the early-ripening Dent, a small 

 plant, usually not more than from two and a half to three 

 and a half feet tall, which bears ears near the ground and 

 ripens the latter part of August, but will be fit for table use 

 in the early part of August ; while in the case of the Ches- 

 ter County Mammoth we have a tall-growing corn which 

 ripens its ears not very early, — indeed, too late for the aver- 

 age season in New England, — but which will succeed in the 

 climate of Pennsylvania, and in some few selected localities 

 further north, and bears its ears high up from the ground. 

 Here, you see, there are differences which are transmitted 

 from the seed to the plant. If you examine still further 

 you will find that the crop of those two varieties will always 

 differ ; that there are certain maximum crops which can al- 

 ways be obtained from each, but there may be a difference 

 of thirty or forty weighed bushels per a(5re between the two 

 crops. In other words, in order to have a maximum crop 



