360 QUARTERLY JOURNAL. 



as it is prepared for grinding, and run it through the wind-mill at a 

 speed which will blow one-fourth or one-third of it out, and with 

 this, nearly all the weed and grass-seeds ; then run it through the 

 rolling screen, and thus separate any cockle, weed, or cheat seed, 

 which may remain ; then wash it, and if there has been any smut 

 in it, wash it again in salt water, and spread it upon the barn floor 

 and sift lime upon it and mix it, I will venture to assert, that in any 

 soil, the product will be increased from 15 to 20 per cent over what 

 it would have been, if the wheat had been sown without this prepara- 

 tion. If this be so, what labor and pains so profitably spent ? And 

 that it is so, is not only constantly taught us by experience, but is 

 perfectly consistent with those reasons which are so familiar to us all. 

 Cheat, cockle, rag-weed and smut, are principally what infest the 

 wheat field. Where weeds grow, they occupy the place of wheat, 

 and take that nourishment from the ground which ihe wheat should 

 have ; and I need not use any argument to prove that they will not 

 grow unless the seed is in the ground, and that it will not be there 

 — at least in such quantities — unless it be put there. Indeed I 

 know from experience, that in the course of a few years these 

 weeds will be wholly exterminated by that strict attention to the 

 cleansing of seed which is here recommended. Smut is but an in- 

 fectious disease of the grain, and is common to wheat, corn and 

 cats ; but no one need have it in either, if he will but take the trouble 

 to cleanse his seed. For several successive years have I made the 

 experiment of cleansing smutted wheat, by washing a small portion 

 of it in salt water and putting lime upon it, and venture the assertion 

 that it will never fail to purify it. I have also taken pure wheat and 

 mixed smui with it, and thus communicated the disease, and it will 

 never fail to produce smutted wheat. The same remark may be 

 made with regard to oats and corn ; for the blighted head of oats, 

 and the large black excrescence which sometimes grows upon corn, 

 although different in appearance, are essentially the same thing. 



It is a very common impression that wheat is improved by 

 changing it from one kind of soil to another. It may be so ; and if 

 *' what every body says must be true," it is so : but I may be per- 

 mitted to doubt it, if it be only for the purpose of inducing thought 

 and observation on this point. Each one of your readers is prepared 

 to say, " I know this from experience ; but, notwithstanding, it is 

 still worth the inquiry, whether his experience is not this, that when 

 he went from home after seed, he went aUer good seed, better liian 

 his own, which he sowed in the next field, and cultivated in the 

 same way, and upon which his observation induced him to come to 

 the conclusion, that the seed he got from the slate land produced 

 better than his own ? I am not prepared to enlist myself upon the 

 one or the other side of this question. 



Seed corn should be selected while it is upon the stalk ; it can 

 not be so well done afterwards. Every one has observed how much 

 sooner some ears of corn in the same field ripen than others, and 



