PROCEEDINGS OF THE FARMERS' CI.UB. 261 



and lying in water. Serve the rods the same at each corner of 

 the house ; so you have four connections with the ground. This 

 is cheap and permanent, and any man can put it up himself. 

 Sixty pounds of wire will cover a large house. Three things I 

 insist on, viz : 1, That the wires shall be thoroughly connected 

 all over the house, and soldered. 2. Thoroughly connect them 

 with the copper strips ; and, 3. The copper must be carried down 

 to water or very wet ground. 



Your secretary asks (sarcastically, I suppose,) whether light- 

 ning rods are really a protection? I answer that three in four 

 are really no protection at all, from defects in the connection, or 

 have got out of order. Two of our churches have nice rods 

 upon them, but the lower ends of them lie upon the surface of 

 the ground to-day, and are really exposing the buildings worse 

 than if they were away. Barns are more frequently struck than 

 houses, especially when full of hay and grain and the moisture 

 and electricity passing up in a continuous stream into the 

 heavens. Barns should be protected and the rods carried up 

 high, and in the column of moisture, so as to intercept the elec-. 

 tricity before it reaches into the building. 



Let me ask your secretary if he ever knew a building with a 

 copper roofing to be injured by lightning? And yet Prof. Page 

 used the roofing of the Patent Ofiice at Washington as his bat- 

 tery for years, in his experiments. It was always active and 

 alive with electricity. 



A FEW WORDS ABOUT CORN AND POTATOES. 



The distance between hills should depend upon the kind of 

 corn. For Southern and Western five feet is about near enough 

 for a profitable crop. For Button, three and a-half to four feet. 

 For early Canada I planted once twenty-two by twenty-four 

 inches, four kernels in a hill, and I had one hundred and one 

 measured bushels on a measured acre. Never top corn, and 

 why? The sap which is elaborated in the leaf and upper part 

 of the stalk is fitted to perfect the corn. The best farmer in our 

 country settled that question years since. In a large field of 

 corn he topped several rows, left the same number to ripen 

 unmutilated, and cut up by the ground an equal portion at two 

 different periods of growth, viz : one when the kernel was fairly- 

 seared, and another when the corn was thoroughly seared. The 

 result proved conclusively that the corn cut at the ground when 

 fairly seared was the best and heaviest, and the fodder was also 



