CORN 177 



Experiment Station gave silage and non-silage milk to 

 372 persons to be tested without knowledge of its source. 

 Sixty per cent preferred the silage milk, 29 per cent pre- 

 ferred the non-silage milk, and 11 per cent had no choice. 



165. Uses of Corn. The chief use of corn is as a food 

 for farm animals. The enormous meat-producing indus- 

 try of the United States is based on corn, grass and alfalfa. 

 A large amount of corn is also used as human food, par- 

 ticularly in the South and in the regions where wheat 

 is less plentiful. 



Many products are also manufactured from corn. It 

 is the chief source of alcohol and whiskey. It is the cheap- 

 est material in America for making denatured alcohol. 

 Some of the products are malt liquors, glucose, corn starch, 

 corn oil. Less important products are paper made from 

 husks and stalks, explosives from the pith, packing for 

 war vessels from the pith, corn-cob pipes. The pith has 

 the property of expanding when wet, so that it will stop 

 leaks in a vessel when pierced. Some counties in Mis- 

 souri grow a special variety with large cobs for corn- 

 cob pipes. Some of the chief by-products are gluten 

 meal and distilled grains, which are used as stock foods. 



The proportion of the corn that is fed to stock is much 

 greater in states west of Chicago than it is in Illinois. 

 This is because it is cheaper to ship the meat produced 

 by a bushel of corn than it is to ship the corn. A bushel 

 of corn will produce 10 to 11 pounds of pork. Instead of 

 shipping five or six pounds of corn, a farmer can feed it 

 to a hog and have only one pound to ship. (See page 357.) 



Less than 2 per cent of the corn crop of the United States 

 is exported, while over one-third of the wheat crop is 



