SECRETARY'S REPORT. 89 



The five lots of corn in the foregoing table, together weighing 

 in January 27,032 pounds, and yielding 395 bushels of 56 

 pounds each, required on an average 68.43 pounds of ears for 

 one bushel of shelled corn. 



Now if we estimate 85 pounds of ears at harvest to yield 56 

 pounds of shelled corn, and the shrinkage is upon an average 

 23 per cent., we have heretofore committed an important error 

 in acknowledging 85 pounds for a bushel of the specimen rod. 

 For although 85 pounds of ears at the time the farmer gathers 

 in a field of maize may on an average give 56 pounds of shelled 

 corn, yet the supervisor usually selects his rod or two rods 

 several days before the rest of the field is harvested, and in those 

 intervening days the ripening corn will shrink from two to five 

 per cent. 



" Take Mr. G. W. Wood's corn for example. The two rods 

 which I harvested October 7th, shrank 25^ per cent., while the 

 rest of the field, harvested about the last of October, shrank 

 only 19.96 per cent., making more than 5| per cent, difference. 

 This corn was rather green at the time of harvest, and being on 

 low ground, did not ripen so fast as it would on higher and 

 warmer land. 



With Mr. James Howard's corn the case was different. His 

 two rods, gathered October 6th, were riper and on higher land. 

 This shrank in weight 23 per cent., while the whole acre har- 

 vested some ten days later, (being in such a state of forward- 

 ness that the ripening process was more rapid,) arrived to such 

 a state of dryness, during the intervening ten days, that it 

 shrank in weight only 18.57 per cent, to the first of January; 

 thus making a difference of nearly 4| per cent, in the shrinkage 

 between the specimen rods and the whole acre. 



" Thus you may perceive that the difficulties are numerous 

 and various in obtaining an exact estimate of an acre of corn, 

 from the weight of a single rod taken from the field even but a 

 few days before the whole is harvested. 



" But with all these difficulties so various and so numerous, 

 the experiments which have been made under the offer of this 

 premium, have shown us to a demonstration that more than one 

 hundred bushels of good sound corn can be raised on one acre 

 of land in Plymouth county ; also, that 85 pounds of ears at the 

 time corn is usually harvested, will yield a bushel or 56 pounds 



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