126 AMERICAN AGRICULTURE. 



a staple article is felt in every department of our agriculture; 

 and is conclusively shown by the low prices of beef, pork, 

 mutton, human food, whiskey and highwines, to all of which 

 corn is made largely to contribute. Nearly all the beef and 

 pork of the vast and fertile west, and much in the north and 

 south is fed upon it. Corn seems to have been created for 

 this western hemisphere. It is raised in boundless luxuri- 

 ance from the frozen regions of Canada, almost to the Straits 

 of Magellan. It riots in the fierce blaze of our cloudless 

 western sun, and it is here that it attains the highest perfec- 

 tion. Its most prolific area on this continent lies between 

 40 North and 38 South latitude, deducting a limited portion 

 of the equatorial regions. Close attention in its cultivation 

 is necessary when receding from these limits towards the poles 

 on account of a deficiency of sun for ripening it. In such 

 localities, the smaller and earlier kinds should be planted on a 

 warm soil so as to mature before the first frosts. 



VARIETIES. There is no one of the cereal grains or grass- 

 es which manifests itself under such multiplied forms as maize. 

 From the little shrubby stalk that grows on the shores of Lake 

 Superior to the palmetto-like corn of the Miami Valley, and 

 from the tiny ears and flattened, closely clinging grains of the 

 former, the brilliant rounded little pearl, or the thickly wedged 

 rice corn, to the magnificently elongated, swelling ear of the 

 Kentucky, with its deeply indented gourd seed, it is develop- 

 ed in every grade of sub- variety. The kernels are long,- round, 

 or flat, and are white, yellow, blue, red or striated ; out each 

 contain the same principles of nutriment combined in some- 

 what different proportions, and contributes for equal weights, 

 nearly in the same ratio to the support of man and the lower 

 order of the animal creation, The analysis of corn as given 

 by Dr. Dana, is in 100 parts, of 



Flesh forming principles, (gluten and albumen) 12-60 

 Fat forming, (gum, sugar, starch, oil, woody fibre,) 77'09 

 Salts, 1-31 



Water, 9 



100 



Besides the kinds in general cultivation in this country, 

 varieties have been occasionally introduced from abroad, of a 

 character so different as almost to entitle them to the distinc- 

 tion of independent species. Such are the Chinese tree corn, 

 bearing its slender ears at the extremity of several expanded 

 branches ; the Egyptian with its millet-like head ; the Ore- 



