SECRETARY'S REPORT. lOT 



mixing with it some butter and a little pepper and salt. It will boil as 

 soft and taste as well as when fresh from the garden. It will be better 

 for soaking aU night in water before cooking. 



It is well known that the stalks of Indian corn, as they begin 

 to turn color in ripening, contain from ten to fifteen per cent, 

 of sugar in the juice, especially if the ears are plucked off as 

 soon as they form. This juice may be expressed precisely as 

 that of the sugar cane, and treated in the same way, but it has 

 not been found practicable to use it for this purpose in countries 

 where the sugar cane can be grown. During the Revolutionary 

 War it was very common to make molasses from Indian corn, 

 though it was liable to sour. The molasses made from it has 

 a corn stalk flavor, but this does not appear in the sugar. It 

 does not granulate as readily as the juice of the sugar cane. 



Enormous quantities of our best grains are now annually 

 withdrawn from their legitimate uses as food for man and 

 beast, for the purpose of making alcoholic liquors of them. 

 Many distilleries consume more than 2,000 bushels of Indian 

 corn or otlier grains, a day, on an average, so that the con- 

 sumption of corn in this way is very great. Cincinnati is the 

 greatest whiskey market, and tbe Ohio Valley the most impor- 

 tant whiskey producing region in the world. One distillery in 

 Cincinnati consumes 1,000 bushels of Indian coi'n alone, making 

 from it 4,000 gallons per day, or about 1,248,000 gallons a 

 year from 312,000 bushels of corn. It is ascertained, that the 

 quantity of whiskey annually sold in the above-named city, is 

 220,000 barrels, or 9,000,000 of gallons, and this is only about 

 one-half of the production of Ohio and Indiana. The yield of 

 those two States alone, for 1858, was about 18,000,000 gallons 

 therefore, and the consumption of Indian corn 12,500,000 

 bushels, and the money value of the product was $5,000,000. 

 This business is rapidly increasing. It is said that as much 

 whiskey can be made from the cobs of corn, weight for weight, 

 as from potatoes. 



The quantity of spirits which Indian corn yields depends 

 chiefly upon the proportion of starch which it contains, and 

 the small quantity of uncrystallizable sugar in it. One hundred 

 pounds of corn yield a spirit containing 45 per cent, of absolute 

 alcohol. In the manufacture of whiskey the corn oil is sep- 



