176 THE BOOK OF CORN 



he is doing, but for what he has done. Yet to Director 

 Redding, if to anyone, should be given the chief 

 credit for the initial steps leading to the present 

 active metamorphosis in com culture at the south. The 

 Georgia experiment station first practically established 

 the value of the shredder and exploited its principal 

 product, corn hay, by proving incontestably that the 

 anticipated and dreaded shrinkage of grain upon the 

 ear was a mere phantom of the imagination, amounting 

 at most, to some two bushels per acre in a yield of 

 thirty-odd, with a consequent loss of one dollar, offset 

 by a gain of more than six dollars in the stalks alone, 

 exclusive of the saving resulting from the substitution 

 of the new for the old way in the manipulation of the 

 blades and shocks — certainly some four dollars addi- 

 tional per acre. The Georgia station and its director 

 must also be credited with the chief part in exploiting 

 the "triennial rotation system," and impressing its im- 

 portance upon the public. 



The large size of the stalk in southern varieties of 

 corn necessitates a difference of procedure from the 

 northern method in one detail — shocking. It forces 

 the employment of the "grasshopper," a light wooden 

 frame, some five feet high, like a capital A, with one or 

 two more cross-slats. From the apex of the A extends 

 an eight-foot scantling diagonally to the ground. This 

 simple apparatus, moved about the field by the 

 shockers, materially assists the process of bunching 

 and binding, the workmen mounting it to arrange and 

 tie the stalks. 



One Acre Yielded 255 Bushels — In considering 

 southern methods of growing corn it is interesting to 

 note briefly the record of Z. J. Drake of Marlborough 

 County, South Carolina, who produced the grand prize 

 crop in the American Agriculturist contest conducted 

 in 1889. From a single acre Mr Drake grew two bun- 



