EXPERIMENT ON CORN. 183 



right beside me my neighbor, Mr. Knowlton, planted his, and 

 put manure in the hill, and I noticed that it started quicker 

 than mine ; but after mine started there seemed to be great 

 growth in it. I could not help watching it with great pleas- 

 ure from the beginning. When the time came for hoeing, — 

 I was hardly aware that it had approached that point, — it was 

 some little distance from my house, and I found that it had 

 grown higher than I expected, — I ran my cultivator through it 

 both ways, and hoed it thoroughly. After that, I again found 

 that the growth had been so rapid, that I thought I could only 

 cultivate it another time, and I ran my cultivator through it 

 each way, and then put a man upon it, and he went through 

 the field almost as fast as he could walk, hoeing it the second 

 time, and that was all the cultivation that it had. My neigh- 

 bors laughed at me a good deal.^ One man said, "I knew a 

 minister who planted beans, and after they came up, he pulled 

 the beans up and stuck them in the ground again, thinking 

 they had come up the wrong way." My neighbor, who lent 

 me the land, said, "How is this? Do you carry your fertil- 

 izer in your pocket?" Another man came along and said, 

 "You have put your hills three feet apart each way. I guess 

 you will have a great crop ! " I bore it with all the equanim- 

 ity possible under the circumstances. When I harvested the 

 corn, I weighed every single bushel of sound ears, and found 

 that I had, reckoning seventy-five pounds to a bushel of 

 shelled corn, 60| bushels of shelled corn to the acre. That 

 was the result of my experiment. 



My neighbors have had better success. Mr. Valorous 

 Taft, w r ell known in this county, has made an experiment on 

 two pieces of laud, following nearly the same routine that I 

 have described with regard to my own experiment, and he has 

 raised at the rate of ninety bushels to the acre on one piece, 

 and on the other at the rate of sixty bushels per acre. I have 

 another neighbor who has tried different fertilizers, using the 

 Jackson fertilizer, the Stockbridge fertilizer and the Brighton 

 fertilizer. I will only say, that in all the experiments that 

 have been made, the results have come very nearly up to the 

 promise made by the formula when we started ; to wit, that it 

 would give us at the rate of fifty bushels to the acre, besides 

 the natural yield. But I want to say, that everywhere in 



