34 THE COMPLETE FARMER 



manured, the crop twice cleaned, and the entire acre o-ather- 

 ed and weighed accurately the same day. The product in 

 ears was one hrndred and three bushels, each eighty-four 

 pounds net, and sixty-five pounds over. The last bushel was 

 shelled and measured, Mhich showed a product on the acre 

 of one hundred and eighteen bushels ten quarts. I gathered 

 at the rate of more than one hundred bushels to the acre 

 from four rods planted in the third method, last summer, the 

 result ascertained in the most accurate manner. Corn 

 shrinks about twenty per cent, after it is cribbed. The sixth 

 mode is the one by which the Messrs. Pratts, of Madison 

 county, obtained the prodigious crop of one hundred and 

 sevv^nty bushels per acre. These gentlemen, I am told, are 

 of opinion, that the product cf an acre may be increased to 

 two hundred bushelr.' 



We believe that nearly all the large and premium crops 

 which have been noted in the annals of agi'iculture, were 

 procured by planting the corn in drills, either single, double, 

 or treble. There has, however, been a difference in opinion 

 relative to planting corn in ridges or on a flat surface. This, 

 we think, depends on the nature of the soil. A loamy soil, 

 or such as is proper for corn, ought, in our climate, to be cul- 

 tivated in a flat way, that it may the better retain moisture. 

 Dr. Black, of Delaware, ad vises to plant corn in such a man- 

 ner that the rows may run directly 7i07-th and south. General 

 Hull, of Newton, Massachusetts, in cultivating a premium 

 crop of corn, ' drew furrows north and south three and a half 

 feet apart. No ridges were formed. Hills were then made 

 with the hoe in those furrows two feet apart, not fiat, but de- 

 sceiiding to the south, luith a small bank on the north side of 

 each hill, for the purpose of giving the young plants a fairer 

 exposure to the sun. 



When corn is planted on green sward land, the holes for 

 the hills or di-ills should be made quite through the furrows, 

 and dung put into the holes. If this caution be not observed 

 the crop will be uneven, as the roots in somj places, where 

 the furrows are thickest, will have but little benefit from the 

 rotting of the sward. But if the holes are made through, 

 the roots Avill be fed with both fixed and putrid air, supplied 

 by the fermentation in the grass roots of the turf."^ 



Some entertain an idea, that it is injurious to stir the soil 

 when it is dry and the plants are suflering for want of rain. 

 The error of this supposition is well exposed in an article 



* Deane's N. E. Farmer. 



