THE GENESEE FARMER. 



it is removed from the water. This mass is permeated by a number of canals, though 

 which the sponge possesses the power of making the water continually pass, with the 

 purpose, doubtless, of extracting nourishment from it. Sponges have never been known 

 to exhibit either sensation or the power of voluntary motion ; and hence many naturalists 

 arrange them among vegetables. But the little germs that produce sponge, move about 

 before fixing themselves to a rock ; sponges are from analogies of structure usually con- 

 sidered now to be of an animal nature, although the usual manifestations of animal 

 existence are not obvious to our senses. 



CORN CULTURE. 



An esteemed correspondent, " S. Y.," of Essex county, N. Y., objects to making large, 

 high hills in hoeing corn, for various reasons : 1. Because such hills shed rain, and 

 sutler more from drought than flat ones, .or none at all. 2. Corn gives out more suckers 

 when hilled up, which is considered a damage to the crop. 3. It keeps the corn more 

 backward ; it does not ripen so early, as it gives out a new set of brace roots every 

 time it is hoed. 4. It costs three times the labor to cultivate the crop with the exces- 

 sive use of the hoe that it does to rely mainly on the cultivator and plow. 



We beg to assure our eastern friend that corn growers in Western New York and 

 the Great West, produce millions of bushels of this important staple without ever 

 tiiking a hoe into the field at all, except to plant, and often not for that. 



His suggestions about not planting corn too thick, particularly where one desires to 

 raise pumpkins or beans between the rows, are judicious; as is also the caution not to 

 cut the roots of corn plants with the hoe in cutting up weeds about the hill. He plants 

 on greensward turned over just before planting; and instead of spreading- manure before 

 plowing, it is applied afterwards, and harrowed in before the ground is planted. In a 

 postscript he says : ^ 



"I always make use of a preparation [for soaking seed] that I found in the Genesee Farmer in 

 184:6, May number, page 107. It came to hand just in time. I had a piece of ground that I 

 intended to pLant to corn, and it was full of wire woiins; I used the preparation with beneficial 

 results, and I do not know that I lo*t a hill of corn that year by the worm. I have made use of 

 it every year ever since with great beneft to the crop — enough to pay me for the Genesee Farmer 

 Jifty years at its present price." 



As many of our subscribers ' may not have the volume of 1846, we again place on 

 record the "preparation" alluded to. It consists in dissolving two pounds of copperas 

 in sufficient soft or rain water to cover a bushel of seed corn, in which it is allowed to 

 stand twelve or fifteen hours. To a peck of this soaked corn, there is added a pint or 

 more of soft soap, and the two are thoroughly stirred with a stick till every seed is 

 coated with the soap. The corn is then dried sufficiently for planting by adding ground 

 plaster, and again stirring it. 



Mr. Lansing Wetmore appears to have first recommended the above preparation in 

 the Farmers' Librarij., and found it to increase his crop 33 per cent., besides keeping 

 ofi" insects and birds. His experiment appears to have been carefully made, and 

 resulted in giving him a gain of 200 bushels of ears for copperas, soap, and plaster, 

 worth not to exceed sixty-three cents. 



Hornless Cattle. — In our last issue we expressed the opinion that probably hornless 

 cattle were not over two or two and a half centuries old as a distinct race. This opinion 

 was based on an authority, of the correctness of which we had some misgivings at the 

 time the article was written, and on further research, we now believe to be erroneous. 

 Being still anxious to trace the early history of all our domesticated stock of the Bos 



