SUPERIOR TO ITS ACCIDENTS. 189 



best suited to our capricious climate. The farmer who by im- 

 perfect tillage and lazy liabits, has reached the conclusion that 

 we in New England have no certain crops, is indulging in griev- 

 ous error. All our cereal and grass crops are certain enough 

 if our fields are in perfect condition, but corn may be said to 

 never fail if a reasonable amount of attention is given it. My 

 crop has never fallen below seventy bushels of shelled corn to 

 the acre, and in 18G9 I grew in about one hundred days a crop 

 of one htnidred and six bushels to the acre. So late was this 

 season that I was able to walk across the ice-bound lake upon 

 which my fields border on the 10th of April, and snow rested 

 on my potato patch the 2d day of May, Corn among crops 

 with us in Massachusetts, is like a Bronsonian democrat, it rises 

 " superior to its accidents." The crop at Lakeside the present 

 season, hot and parched as it has been, has reached seventy-five 

 bushels to the acre. The cost of the corn in the aggregate, 

 raised during the seven seasons, does not exceed forty-five cents 

 per bushel. In this estimate we include one-half the cost of 

 the fertilizers and all the labor from the time of planting to 

 shelling, but it does 7iot take into account the fodder which has 

 proved in my experience to have a high value. This has been 

 fed to milch cows in association with wheat straw in the long 

 and cut condition, and careful observation and experiment 

 show that it is worth nearly as much, as a milk-producing agent, 

 as upland hay. Corn, gentlemen, is the cereal to which we 

 should give special attention. To grow it profitably we must 

 grow Ia7'ge quantities on small parcels of ground. It requires 

 no greater expense for labor to raise seventy-five to one hundred 

 bushels to the acre, than to raise twenty-five. Corn can be 

 grown in good quantity for several consecutive years upon the 

 same field by the use of agents which hold those great essentials 

 to plant-growth, — phosphoric acid, potash and lime ; but to 

 attain to the highest success, substances capable of affording the 

 nitrogenous element must be added. The first three years of 

 my experiments with the corn crop, I depended solely upon 

 dressings composed of lime, potash or ashes, and flour of bone, 

 and my crops were excellent, but I now use in association four 

 cords of good fresh farm dung to the acre, spread over the 

 ploughed field and harrowed in with a Geddes harrow. Into 

 the hills at the time of planting, I place a handful of a mixture 



