20 OUR FARM CROPS. 



be perfect in itself and that it should be fully matured? 

 The temptation of the higher price too often takes all the 

 best grain of the farm to the market, while the inferior 

 qualities, including even the tail corn with all its imma- 

 ture and injured grains, are, with a sadly short-sighted 

 economy, considered good enough to risk the next year's 

 crop upon. 



Another point to be attended to in reference to seed 

 corn, is the advantage of changing it, as often as circum- 

 stances will permit, for seed grown in a different district^ 

 both as regards soil and climate, from your own, as seed 

 constantly produced year after year on the same soil is 

 apt to deteriorate in quality, and to produce a crop less 

 vigorous and more liable to disease than if its conditions 

 of growth had been frequently changed. 



This practice of changing seed is becoming every year 

 more followed, experience satisfactorily confirming the 

 correctness of its principles. Not only is a more healthy 

 plant secured, but an opportunity is offered to the farmer, 



1 Tn the Journal $ Agriculture Pratique, for November, 1856, a report is 

 given of some experiments by M. Lucien Rousseau, of Angerville, on the 

 growth of various kinds of wheat, under the same conditions of time of sowing, 

 soil, and climate. There were fifteen lots of different wheats experimented 

 with, and the sixteenth was composed of equal portions of the fifteen mixed 

 together. Throughout the growth of the plants, the mixed lot appeared 

 always to have the advantage, and at the time of harvest, its produce, both in 

 grain and straw, was considerably in excess of any of the others. M. Rousseau 

 seems to consider the superior produce of the mixed grain to be due mainly to 

 the more perfect impregnation of the floret, by the ears making their appear- 

 ance at as many different times as there were varieties sown ; for if the first 

 flower, he says, which has lost its pollen, has not been fertilized, owing to the 

 badness of the weather, it may still be capable of being impregnated by the 

 pollen from a later ear. M. L. Vilmorin, in commenting on the experiments, 

 says:" A mixture of grain arising from sorts selected as suitable to the dis- 

 trict, does not present usually any marked difference of appearance so as to be 

 lessened in value. On the other hand, the increase in yield, and the greater 

 chance of success arising from the variety of different constitutions of the kinds 

 sown, gives the results obtained by M. Rousseau an importance which ought 

 not to be disregarded. By taking care not to mix sorts, the grain of which 

 has not the same market value, and does not ripen at about the same time, it 

 appears that very important advantages may be derived." 



