40 



brought in I wish to put the lessons which we have learned in such a form 

 that you can take them back home with you and apply them. Unless we 

 can take these things home and apply them to our own work there is 

 not very much gained by having been here. 



Representative Ears from the Twelve Highest Yielding Lots of Seed. 



In leading up to the work that was done in Woodford County beginning 

 in 1919 we will have to go back to 1903, because that Woodford County 

 corn test was not begun in 1919, it was commenced in 1903, back in Sioux 

 County in Iowa. Many of you older men and some of the younger ones 

 have had the privilege of coming in contact with Professor Holden who 

 was with the University of Illinois for a few years, with the Funk Brothers 

 Seed Company for a time, and then for several years in charge of the 

 Department of Agronomy first and then with the Department of Agricul- 

 tural Extension of the Iowa State College. It was while he was there that 

 this work really began. There were some of the people who came down 

 to the Farmers' Short Course at Ames and were inspired by the work 

 that Professor Holden and his associates had done there who asked if 

 the work could not be brought home to them so that more of their people 

 could see it. This led to the beginning of what was known as the County 

 Farm Demonstration Work. 



In the county farm demonstration work there were three lines of 

 work done with corn that led up to the doing of the work that is just 

 being completed this year in Woodford County. One line was what was 

 known as the "Farmers' Variety Test." In carrying that on we would go 

 into a county where they had applied for this work and arrangements had 

 been made with county boards of supervisors to conduct the work on the 

 County Farm. Men would drive through the county and gather seed corn 

 from people in the county, getting from sixty to eighty samples from the 

 planter boxes just as the men were planting the corn in the fields. When 

 they had gathered up sixty to eighty samples they would be taken to the 

 county farm and planted side by side. In the fall a picnic would be held, 

 people would get together and see the difference in the corn. The corn 

 would be husked out, graded and records kept. A little publication would 

 be gotten out showing the peculiar differences there were in the corn. 

 After eight years of that kind of work, in 32 counties all over the state of 

 Iowa, in which corn from 4516 different farms was tested, the significant 

 condition was learned that when we got a large number of samples of 

 corn just as the farmers of any county .would plant them, put them side 

 by side under the same conditions, we found that the best ten percent on 

 an average of those eight years' work yielded just about eleven bushels 

 per acre more than the average of all of the corn in the test. At the same 

 time there would be ten percent yielding about thirteen bushels per acre 

 less than the average corn. 



After we had done that for several years we got to the point where 

 we knew almost to a certainty when we gathered up the samples in the 



