SECRETARY'S REPORT. 69 



caseine and gluten, which makes muscle, while the Sioux con- 

 tains IQyq per cent, of these substances ; the latter is therefore 

 most profitable, other things being equal, as food for working 

 oxen or horses. The sound square corn contains of starch, 

 sugar, oil and gum, which make fat, 60 ^^ per cent., while the 

 sound, small white flint corn contains IQ-^q per cent, of these 

 substances, and is therefore ft^r more valuable for fattening 

 cattle or hogs. If the square corn is worth fifty cents a bushel, 

 the flint would seem to be equally cheap at fifty-eight cents a 

 bushel. 



The composition and nutritive qualities of corn also vary 

 with the varieties, as they depend on diflerent circumstances. 

 But it is curious that in mixture each variety, though growing 

 on the same plant or ear, retains its power of selecting its 

 appropriate quantity of inorganic salts from the soil. Every 

 yellow flint kernel found on a mixed or variegated ear, shows 

 the same constituents when chemically analyzed that the same 

 quantity on a whole ear of pure yellow flint would show. 



Sweet corn contains most phosphates, twice as much as the 

 common Tuscarora, and must take it up from the soil. It has 

 little starch, much sugar and gum, and the small stalks exhaust 

 the land but little. Southern corn contains more starch than 

 northern ; common Tuscarora the most, and rice and pop corn 

 the least. Baden corn has a very fine, white oil ; rice corn 

 contains most oil ; pop corn, Canada, eight-rowed, yellow, brown 

 and King Philip corn rank next. Common Tuscarora has 

 neither oil nor gluten, but the Tuscarora called also Turkey 

 wheat, from New York, yielded 6.32 per cent, of oil. 



The southern and Dent varieties of corn have their oil and 

 gluten on the sides of their elongated seeds, and the starch 

 projects quite through the grain to its summit, and by its con- 

 traction in drying forms the dent or depression. Pop, called 

 also pearl corn, contains its oil in little subdivided cells in the 

 horny portion of the grain in minute drops. When heated, 

 the oil is decomposed into carbonated hydrogen gas, the same 

 kind we use for light, and it explodes and every cell is broken 

 and the grain turned wrong side out. The meal of oily varie- 

 ties is less liable to ferment and become sour. The oil being 

 next the hull, if that is not given or digested, the fatty property 

 is lost. The horny and yellow as a general rule have more oil 



