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But it is rather as a forage crop that this plant properly belong* 

 in this treatise. Its uses are almost as various as Indian corn it- 

 self. As has been already stated, it is greedily eaten in all stages 

 by stock of every kind. The seeds are abundant, and one acre of 

 good corn will make from forty to sixty bushels of seed. These 

 can be cut from the corn and stored for use, taking care to spread 

 the heads until they dry, when they make good food for cattle,, 

 horses, sheep, hogs and poultry. When ground into flour they 

 make good bread. Both the seeds and the expressed juice have 

 been extensively used in distillation, large quantities of alcohol and 

 sorghum brandy being annually made from them. During the war 

 it formed almost the only resource of the South for whisky, all 

 grains being in too much demand for distillers to use them. 



But probably it possesses more good qualities as a green soiling 

 plant than any other one. Let it be sown either broadcast or 

 thickly drilled with a seed drill very early in the spring, with 

 about one bushel of seed to the acre, and there is no end to its feed- 

 ing capacity. It will yield from twenty to thirty tons of green 

 fodder to the acre, that, when dry, will make three or four tons of 

 the sweetest and best of hay, and stock will eat up the last vestige 

 of it. The proper time of cutting is when the heads begin ta 

 flower, when it can be cut and bundled as corn fodder, or left 

 spread on the ground, if the weather is good, for several days, and 

 it will dry enough to store, but not in too large a bulk. Its stems 

 are so succulent that it will not cure quickly, the juices in it, how- 

 ever, will sugar directly, and then it will keep as well as timothy.. 

 It possesses fattening qualities in an eminent degree, and nothing 

 like it was ever used for improving a drove of mules. But if the 

 farmer has a drove of mules or herd of cattle or milch cows, it can 

 be fed to them from the time it is two feet high, and they will eat 

 it with avidity. By the time a field is gone over, it will be ready 

 to cut again, as the root freely throws up new suckers, and will- 

 continue to do so until stopped by the frost. Thus, as many as 

 three crops can be cut before it is destroyed by the cold. Or, if it 

 is not wanted as green forage, it can be cut at blossoming, at least 

 twice, without resowing, and the second crop will be as good as the 

 first. A mule raiser in Williamson county has several large racks, 

 and as soon as the hay is in condition to cut, he draws a load to 

 each rack daily, and the mules are allowed to go to it ad libitum, so 



