542 MONTHLY JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURE. 



I know a clever man who tells nie that 100 pounds of corn cohs will give as 

 much whisky as 100 pounds of potatoes. The half bushel of cobs weighed 7 

 pounds ; a bushel of cobs, of course, 14 pounds ; and, of course, the 500,000,000 

 bushels that will be made this year will be equal to about 35,000 tons." 



Now, simple, and yet important, as these facts are, and easy of ascertainment, 

 we do not remember to have seen them stated before, though they may have 

 been. We now know, nearly enough for all useful purposes, the measure and 

 the weight of cobs from an acre of corn that gives a certain quantity of grain. 

 A crop of 100 bushels of shelled corn gives 100 bushels, and 1,400 pounds weight 

 of cobs. Very well, then, as the sailor says, " belay that," and let us proceed. We 

 still want (except as we shall hereafter show the information to have been par- 

 tially supplied) the weight and the analysis of the shuck perhaps even more than 

 of any other part, for the reason that this particular part of the plant seems to have 

 been altogether overlooked, as far as we are aware of, while we know tliat most 

 farmers in Maryland and Virginia, and farther south, depend very much on it as 

 winter provender for their cattle, esteeming it to be more nutritious and valuable 

 than wheat straw. Why should it not be as carefully analyzed as straw, or 

 any of the grasses, and its weight per acre be ascertained ? 



Mr. Leake, of the Pedee Agricultural Society, South Carolina, soine years 

 a^o reported that " an acre of corn, when first cut for fodder, weighed 156,816 

 pounds — over 70 tons — and that when thoroughly cured for forage, the same 

 wei°^hed 27,297 pounds — over 10 tons. It was thought the dried forage would 

 have been something more had not the corn been cut too early." From his 

 usino- the term cut, we suppose he included the top blade, stalk and shuck. 

 Mr. Tucker, in his "Progress of the United States," reckons 20 pounds oi blades 

 to a bushel of corn. 25,000,000 acres, which it would take to yield 500,000,000 

 bushels, at 20 bushels to the acre, would then give 250,000,000 tons ; but sup- 

 pose the average yield of corn fodder, including the cob and shuck, to be but 3 

 tons to the acre, instead of 10 tons, and the value to be but 20 cents a hundred, 

 or $4 a ton, and we have $300,000,000 as the value of our corn fodder alone — 

 is it too much to assume that it is worth that, if we add, for deficiency, the crop 

 of beans, peas, feathers, sumac, broom-corn, honey and flax-seed, omitted in the 

 Census ? What intelligent farmer would be at a loss to get the value of 20 cents 

 out of every 100 weight of corn fodder? Judge Bucl tells us of a Vermont farm- 

 er who pronounced the corn fodder of any acre of land to be equal in value to the 

 hay that the same land would produce ; and he himself says he carried his cat- 

 tle through the winter on corn fodder in as good condition as on hay. In an ad- 

 dress to the Maryland Agricultural Society, we remember it to have been stated 

 by its then President, Hon. Robert Smith, a polished scholar and gentleman 

 of the good old school, and the most popular Secretary of the Navy we have 

 ever had, that corn-stalks, instead of " wasting their sweetness on the desert air," 

 might, if well cured, be cut up and steamed, and made nourishing food for cat- 

 tle through the whole winter. 



Surely it were superfluous to insist that the facts which these measurements 

 and analyses of corn fodder and corn cobs would bring to light would be of great 

 value, not merely for the practical guidance of the farmer, but for the use of sta- 

 tistical writers in their expositions of our national industry. To him who con- 

 fessedly stands among these in the front rank, Professor Tuckkr, we are indebted 

 for an observation in his *' Progress of the United States," sufficient of itself to 

 demonstrate at once the great value of the blades alone of the corn plant, and 



(1U2) 



