154 MASSACHUSETTS AGRICULTURE. 



His extravagant praise had raised a fever of expectation, and 

 how it was satisfied in corn in the milk that had been picked a 

 fortnight before it was cooked, and meanwhile enjoyed an ocean 

 voyage, any Yankee can guess. It is said that as wry faces 

 went the rounds of the table with the first bite, the host de- 

 clared on his honor that green corn cooked in America tasted 

 vastly diderent from what it was when cooked in England. 

 Some of our city friends know of green corn as a luxury only 

 as a reminiscence of their childhood. 



Of the early varieties of sweet corn the Extra Early Dwarf 

 is as early as any known to me. The ears are small, which is 

 true of most of the earliest vegetables of their kind. The 

 stalks are also small, so that the drills can be planted from two 

 to two and a half feet apart. The Earl Narragansett is within 

 a few days as early, and has the merit of making larger ears, 

 while the kernels are remarkably large. The Forty Days corn 

 is a wliite flint variety, but earlier than any of the sweet sorts, 

 while it is tender and sweet the few days it remains in the milk. 

 Its extreme earliness gives it value as a field corn in northern 

 latitudes. The small early varieties of field corn are not suffi- 

 ciently appreciated. If their habits of growth are fully studied, 

 so that the proper distance apart and between the drills is 

 learned, it will be found that most of them will give as great a 

 crop by the acre as the most prolific large sorts, while the great 

 merit of earliness is all on their side. I have known one of 

 these small varieties yield one hundred bushels of shelled corn 

 to the acre ; yet if planted at the same distance as the ordinary 

 sorts, probabiy the yield would have been little over half that 

 quantity. In a country having so great a variety of soil and 

 climate as ours, the early small sorts of field corn are not fully 

 appreciated. In seasons when the cold, wet springs bring 

 planting into June, they are safe, and in seasons or sections 

 where frosts close vegetable growth by the middle of September, 

 they are safe from harm. 



The drill system is the system for high cultivation and large 

 crops, not only with corn, but with potatoes. By no other 

 mode of cultivation can each stalk have its equal proportion of 

 the soil. There are two difficulties in the way of carrying out 

 the drill system; I am unable to find in any of the agricultu- 

 ral stores of Boston any machine that will drop corn in the 



