140 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITtJTE. 



cut, but ground in mills, liko tlio sorghum sugar-mill. If not 

 ground, the stalks should be cut very fine. If put in a tub, with 

 a gill of salt to five gallons of water, and boiled, the stalk need 

 not be cut so fine, as the cooking softens the silicious coat. 

 Upon underdrained and subsoiled ground, corn never suffers with 

 drouth. I believe that I have made a current profit in two years 

 upon all the cost of und^rdraining, leaving the land worth more 

 than it was before. It increases the value of my land full $50 

 an acre. My rule of manuring is to use all that I can make the 

 crop assimilate. 



Wm. S. Carpenter. — I am in the practice of planting corn for 

 soiling, and I find it a very profitable crop. The expense of put- 

 ting it in is very small, and the crop comes in to great advantage 

 in times of drouth. 



Subject for the next meeting — strawberries. 



Adjourned. 



HENRY MEIGS, Secretary. 



June 11, 18G0. 

 Present, 62 members. John A. Bunting in the chair. 



MISCELLANEOUS BUSINESS. 



The chairman remarked that miscellaneous business was first 

 in order, the first hour being devoted to that purpose. 



CROWS AND CORN. 



A letter from Ira Brown, New Haven, Vermont, says : 

 " I see corn and the depredation of crows was a subject last 

 week. No year has ever exceeded their rapacity in this vicinity. 

 The first sowing of wheat, oats and peas was scratched and torn 

 over till the planting of corn, which was rather early — May 5 — 

 and so on, for ten or fifteen days, as people got ready. The 

 crows fell upon that. I think, in the corner of one field of a 

 neighbor adjoining me, the crows, in two or three days, uprooted 

 the most of it on an area of half an acre, with half a dozen crows 

 (dead) hanging in the field. He got some arsenic, soaked corn, 

 and strewed it on the field. The corn was gone in a day or two, 

 but failed in effect. 



" Half a drachm of strychnine in one quart of water — and 

 two of winter wheat, was soaked and dropped on the fields 

 of corn and wheat just sowed. On a field of wheat near his 



