132 [ASSEMLBY 



Ihin the corn to four plants ; add but little soil, and do not hill 

 them, as level culture is superior. After this you may plow, hoe, 

 and cultivate as much as you please, without injury to your corn, 

 until the 1st of July, at which time you should be able to tie two 

 hills together across your horse's back. If you are annoyed by 

 crows or squirrels, dip kernels of corn in lard and sprinkle some 

 poison over them, and place them near the haunts of your ene- 

 mies. The first one that partakes of the feast will alarm all his 

 fellows, and the whole party will immediately depart. 



If you desire to sow wheat and sod down the land occupied by 

 corn, pull it up by the roots when half the husks have turned 

 brown, and carry it to some convenient place on sleds, and shock 

 it in parcels containins; thirty hills, where it may remain until 

 you have time to husk it. If the land is intended for oats the fol- 

 lowing spring, go through the corn field and husk it while stand- 

 ing, after which pull it up by the roots, shake off the dirt, and 

 house it — your cattle will eat it root and stem during winter, and 

 convert the whole into manure ; this mode leaves your field in 

 splendid tilth for oats. The stock farmer cannot raise any cereal 

 crop that will pay him equal to corn. Some farmers commence 

 to cut oft* the tops just above the ear and strip the blades below, 

 immediately after the corn passes from the milky state, for fod- 

 der. 



I do not approve of this plan, having, by experiment, disco- 

 vered that corn cut and stripped yielded in weight 52 lbs. to the 

 bushel, while that allowed to come to maturity naturally weighed 

 58i lbs. 



A few years since a celebrated chemist in this city analyzed 

 for me the tassel, silk (the first of which is the male, and the se- 

 cond, female), stalk, root, kernel, and cob — likewise the land in 

 which I intended to plant — sub and surface soil. The lacking 

 ingredients were applied to the hill, covered with a hoe, and the 

 corn, after being soaked in salt brine for twenty-four hours, was 

 planted thereon. The season was favorable, and the grov^'th fine. 

 When four feet high a gale occurred from the north, and to my 

 astonishment the corn all simultaneously measured its length in 

 the opposite direction j a neighboring lot retained its vertical po* 



