418 Transactions of the American Institute. 



cleared away the forest and made this portion of the State what it 

 now is. I thought perhaps your Club might be interested in learn- 

 ing whal a man of my years can do, and how he did it. As all the 

 labor of raising my two acres of corn was rjerformed by myself, I can 

 tell you the better. 



The land is what is called " oak openings," light sand ; and being 

 low, was wet, cold, and the sub-soil quicksand. I underdrained, and 

 on the two acres put twenty loads of barn-yard manure. Then turned 

 under the wild sod, plowed four inches deep. Harrowed level and 

 planted May 18th, four feet each way, in hills, five kernels in a hill, 

 with the hoe. When well up, cultivated and hoed, and thinned to 

 four spears. I then put fifty bushels of unleaeheci ashes on the hills. 

 I did this to destroy the cut-worms, which began to injure it, as well 

 as for manure. It was effective. "When six inches high, cultivated 

 and hoed thoroughly. This was all the culture I gave it. It ripened 

 about the last of August so much that I " topped it," as I learned to 

 do in my boyhood in the east ; and when I husked I was able easily 

 to husk and store fifty bushels of ears a day. By always taking the 

 earliest ripe ears I think I have ten or fifteen days the start of the 

 original hackberry, which, sometimes, as in case of early frost, is a desi- 

 rable quality. In husking, I found where the corn was best that 



twelve hills made a bushel of ears. 



Adjourned. 



January 16, 1872. 



Nathan C. Ely, Esq., in the chair ; Mr. John "W. Chambeks, Secretary. 

 A Farmers Opinion of the Institute. 



The Chairman announced that we had with us one of those solid, 

 able men that have done so much to make the agriculture of west- 

 ern New York famous all over the country, and called for the Hon. 

 Harris Lewis, of Herkimer, who responded : I was in hopes, Mr. 

 Chairman, that I might come in, and, taking a back seat, hear you 

 talk without being called upon thus directly to say something. But 

 since you have run me out from behind my haystack, for this I will 

 not forget Frank Curtis, who told the chairman and drew me into 

 this ; and some time, when he has his hair full of hay seed, I will call 

 on him to tell what he knows of farming. 



You had an existence, Mr. Chairman, before I did, and I am not 

 young. In 1812 there was a society organized at Tammany Hall, 

 for the encouragement and protection of American industry. Some 



