SECRETARY'S REPORT. 71 



out a fluted appearance, and is by far the most productive, 

 though it ripens later than the others ; it is invariably white, 

 unless mixed. If the smallest perfectly natural indenture 

 appear in the grains of the hardest corns, they and their 

 descendants, whatever their color, will come to a perfectly white 

 gourd seed. The Canadian corns are too small to be productive, 

 are solid and very early, but are seldom planted in fields where 

 the larger corns will ripen ; though they may be planted closer 

 and if weli manured will produce well, while so far as nutritive 

 qualities are concerned, they are among the most valuable. 



In the southern United States, the southern or white corn is 

 used for human food. They hold there that the yellow corn of 

 the north is strong and heating, and fit only for brute beasts. 

 In Pennsylvania and in England the southern corn sells 

 higher by the bushel, while the northerners think the reverse, 

 and call the southern or flint corn " horse corn," and insipid, 

 claiming that their own only is sweet and savory, and that the 

 corn grown in high latitudes is always (and the same is said of 

 the sorghum or African corn) richer in saccharine matter than 

 that grown at the south. The kernels of the southern corn are 

 larger and flatter than the northern, and the ears nearly twice 

 as long on the average. Stalks of the southern corn have been 

 measured in eastern Tennessee that were twenty-two feet and 

 three inches long ; there are whole fields of it with stalks 

 from twelve to sixteen feet high, and looking like saplings ; it 

 rarely bears more than one ear on the huge stalk, and that six 

 or seven feet from the ground. The species most common and 

 valued for human food in Massachusetts are the large yellow, 

 the red, which difiers from it only in color, the sweet corn, and. 

 what is perhaps the most important, the Canada corn mentioned 

 above. The meal of the northern corn is here considered 

 better, and brings at all times a considerably higher price in our 

 market. In London, in 1851, the price of yellow or northern 

 corn was 29 shilflngs ($6.38) to 30 shillings (|6.60) a quarter, 

 or eight bushels, or 79| to 82|- cents a bushel ; and white or 

 southern corn, 30 shillings (16.60) to 31 shillings ($6.82) a 

 quarter, or 82^ to 85 cents a"quarter. 



In the Philadelphia market, southern flat yellow gourd 

 seed, for sixteen years up to 1812, averaged 68 cents a bushel, 

 and the Pennsylvania round or flint corn, (Pig. 7,) which is 



