Book VI. 



MAIZE, OR INDIAN CORN. 



31 



734 



without injury. The period for performing this is denoted by the state of forwardness or* the vegetation. 

 ' The time for topping is, when you, upon stripping the liusks, open a iittle at the tops of the ears, find the 

 grains of the corn to be hard, not hard enough to grind, nor dry, but hard enough to resist the strong 

 pressure of tlie thumb nail. A second criterion is, all the farina having completely quitted the tassel, and 

 the tassel being completely dead and dry. A third is, the perfect deadness of the ends of the silk ; where, 

 instead of the bright green that appeared before, hanging gracefully down, like the beard of an extra- 

 ordinarily cunning and blas])heming Jew, you will perceive it to be a little contemptible bunch of withered . 

 up and brown-looking stuff! When all these signs appear, the top and the blades have performed their 

 othce, and the sooner they are taken away the better ; because, after this, they do no good, and only serve 

 to retard the ripening of the ears by the exclusion which they cause to the sun and the wind.' The tops 

 and leaves being removed, they are laid in bunches in the intervals, suff*ered to dry, and then carried away 

 and stacked. This part of the produce, we are told, is now a precious deposit for the winter : ' it is liable 

 to no inconvenience to which hay is not liable ; and weight for weight, and weather for weather, an acre 

 of corn tops and blades will give more nutriment to cattle.' They are reserved by the American farmers 

 as footl for their horses and oxen in spring; they are given to race horses and other delicate and highly 

 prized animals. They are cut into chaff, and then mixed with barley and rye. Mr. Cobbett has stated 

 this part of the produce to be more valuable than a crop of hay ; but he has not given us data, either as 

 regards the weight of the crop, or the quantity of the animals it will feed, to enable us to judge of the 

 correctness of his opinion. In France and southern Europe, these parts of the plant are, in like manner, 

 used for fodder ; but we are not aware that they are held in any thing like such high estimation as a crop 

 of hay is with us." {Treatise oti Cobbetfs Corn, and Quar. Jovrn. Agr. vol. i. p. 502.) 



5160. Harvesting. I'he season of harvesting is generally October and November. In America, the 

 ears are slipped or broken from the stem by the hand, and are carried directly to the barn-floor to undergo 

 the process of husking. The buskers, who are generally women and children, are seated around or along- 

 side of a large heap of ears ; they have baskets placed before them ; they strip off' the husks, fling them 

 behind them, and throw the ears into a basket. These baskets as filled, are carried to the granary, or 

 corn-crib, as it is called in America. It may be two feet wide at the bottom, five feet high up the sides to 

 the eaves, and five feet across at the top. It is open or grated at the bottom, with spars at the sides, has 

 a weather-tight roof, and is raised from the ground by posts surrounded with tin as a protection against 

 rats and mice. The husks form an excellent material for stuffing mattresses, and are used for this purpose 

 in America and on the continent of Europe. The now almost leafless stalks which remain in the fields 

 in America are frequently burnt, but on the continent are used as litter for cattle running loose in the 

 farmyard. The ears remain in the granary till they are wanted for shelling, or separating the grains from 

 the receptacle. On tlie continent the ears are cut or broken from the stems as in America, and on a large 

 scale are preserved in small open granaries, such as have been described ; but more frequently they are 

 hung up unhusked under the projecting eaves of all manner of buildings, and remain there till wanted 

 for liusking and shelling. 



5161. Shelling or threshing. This, Cobbett tells us, is done in America by scraping or rasping the ears 



upon a piece of iron, fixed across a tub, into 

 which the grains fall. The iron is commonly a 

 bavonet. In this country there are machines 

 of 'different kinds [fig. ISi. and 2550.), which 

 perform the operation of shelling' with great 

 rapidity; but whoever has a threshing machine 

 might, by setting the rollers and drum some- 

 what wider than usual, dispense with manual 

 labour, both in the operations of husking and 

 shelling ; and indeed we see no reason why the 

 crop should not be harvested like a crop of 

 drilled beans, with Gladstone's bean reaper 

 (2740.), and sheaved, shocked, stacked, and 

 threshed, like any other grain. 



5162. Produce. In America and Australia, 

 the produce in corn is from fifty to seventy 

 bushels to the acre ; on the continent it is gene- 

 rally between fifty and sixty ; and the produce in 

 this country, as it appears by some experiments 

 recorded in the Ga7d. Mag. vol. vi. p. 60 to 67-, 

 would probably be similar, notwithstandipg the 

 circumstance of Mr. Cobbett, Mr. Moore of 

 Sandy, in Bedfordshire, and some others, having 

 raised on small spots at the rate of 100 bushels 

 per acre and upwards. The produce in straw in 

 America and warm countries, where the tallest 

 sorts can be grown, is considerable ; but in this country, where only the dwarfest sorts could be cultivated 

 with success, it would not equal that of a crop of oats or barley. 



S16J. The application of this crop, according to Cobbett, is various and important : " pig- feeding, sheep- 

 feeding, oxen and cow. feeding, poultry-feeding, horse-feeding, and man-feeding ;" to which we may add 

 fish, carp being fed with maize in France. For " man-feeding" it is only made use of in America 

 till the farmer can afibrd to grow wheat ; and on the continent it is only used as a bread corn by the 

 poorest of the people. The wretched inhabitants of the southern part of the Neapolitan territory live 

 chiefly on maize ; as those of some mountainous districts in the north of Italy live on bread made from 

 chestnuts, or buck-v/heat. The most important purpose to which the corn uncrushed can be applied in 

 Europe, appears to us to be the feeding of poultry. All the fat geese noted for their large livers in the 

 north-west of France and south-cast of Germany are fed with maize, the grains unbroken; and the 

 smaller poultry in these countries are also chiefly fed with this corn, broken or ground into meal. 



5164 Turkey feeding, according to Cobbett, is one of the 

 many purposes to which ihe com may be apjilied in this coun- 

 try : " We killed, last spring, one single );ullet, not of a large 



try : " vv e kiuea, last spring, one single );i 

 breed, out of which we took loose fat weighing three i/tiariert of 

 a pouml. We fatttntd most perfectly and finely ten turkeys in 

 the same manner ; and as to geese and ducks, which fat still 

 easier than either of the former, they will gtt fat in this manner 

 in a short space of time. If >ou wish to have fresh egj;s in 

 winter, >ou need resort to no steeping of barley in b er or in 

 wine, or to giving the hens hempseed, or the seed of nettles, 

 as the French do; nor to make such a fuss about keeping the 

 hens warm : give them plenty of com, n:hole, and you will 

 have fresh eggs all the winter long. To the very little chickens, 

 or very young turkeys, you must give some in a cracked state ; 

 but they very soon take it down whole; and, large as it is, the 

 sparrows will eat it as fast as the fowls; and, if you be much 

 infested wi'h them, and do not wish to have a numerous and 

 early breed of them next spring, you must feed the poulity 

 close to the door, or stand by them during the meal, which, 

 however, is conveniently short ; for the grsin is so large that 

 their craws are filled in a minute. It is verv well Inown that. 



m order to have a fat turkey, or even a really fat fowl, we are 

 compelled to resort to cramming. If the feurmcr's wife have a 

 dozen of these, there .she sits (for she can trust nobody else to do 

 it), with a leathern apron before her, or rather upon her, with 

 balls of barley -meal rolled info j;n oblong foim, and with a 

 bowl of w arm mi:k, or with some greasy water, taking one 

 tu'. key cut of tl;e coop at a time upon her lap, forcing its mouth 

 op< n with her left hand, putting in the balls with her right, 

 and stroking with her fingers the outside of the neck to make 

 them descend into the craw, every now and then pouring down 

 a spoonful of the warm liquid, upon the principle that good 

 victuals deserve good drink. There she sits, il she has two 

 dozen of these animals to cram, two goo<l hours at least. 

 Sometimes they reject the food, and flutter about, and splash 

 the woman with the contents of the bowl. It is always a dis- 

 agreeable, troubleiiome, and nasty job ; it takes up a great deal 

 of time ; and yet these things cannot be made sufficiently fat 

 without this operation, in which, I dare say, '20,000 womei. 

 are at this very moment (eight o'clock in the morning) en- 

 gaged, in the counties of Nori'olk and Snfiblk. If all these 

 wcmen could be l;rouf;lit together, and were to hear me say 



