MAIZE 



MAIZE 



405 



made that Cortez, on his march to the city of Mexico 

 in 1519, passed " amidst flourishing fields of maize." 

 The historian, Torquemada, has extracted the par- 

 ticulars of the yearly expenditures of the Mexi- 



Fig. 612. Good com tips. The nose or end is -well 

 covered mth kernels. 



can Palace. One item is 4,900,300 fanegas, or 

 490,030,000 pounds, of maize. 



In 1539, De Soto, in Florida, speaks of Indian 

 villages surrounded by extensive fields of corn. In 

 one instance he narrates that his army passed 

 through continuous fields of maize for two leagues. 

 In one .place they found 500 measures of ground 

 maize, besides a large quantity of grain. 



The Puritans, in King Philip's War in 1675, "took 

 possession of 1,000 acres of corn, which was har- 

 vested by the English and disposed according to 

 their direction." In 1680, La Salle found stores of 

 corn in Illinois that the Indians had placed under 

 ground for seed and subsistence. In his expedition 



Fig. 613. Good corn butts. 



against the Seneca Indians, Marquis de Nouville 

 says, "On the 14th of July, 1685. . . . We remained 

 at the four villages of the Senecas ten days. All the 

 time we spent in destroying the corn, which, includ- 



ing the old corn that was in cache, which ■^e 

 burned, was in such great abundance that the loss 

 was computed at 400,00C minots, or 1,200,000 

 bushels." This was in Ontario county. New York. 



Place of corn in American agriculture. 



From the time of the early settlements, when 

 maize saved the colonists from starvation, till the 

 present, this crop has held an important place, not 

 only in American agriculture, but in the develop- 

 ment and progress of this country. Other crops 

 are of vital importance in certain limited sections ; 

 so is the corn crop ; but in addition to this it is of 

 considerable importance in almost every part of 

 America. To a greater extent than perhaps any 

 other plant, it has become adapted to various en- 

 vironments. For the various latitudes from Canada 

 to the equator there are strains more or less per- 

 fectly adapted which lend themselves readily to 

 further improvement and better adaptation. Suited 

 to the short seasons 

 of the far North are 

 strains that mature in 

 seventy or eighty 

 days and grow but 

 three or four feet tall 

 (Fig. 602), while in 

 the southern part of 

 the United States 

 (Fig. 626), in Mexico, 

 Central America and 

 South America, there 

 are strains that reach 

 a height of twenty 

 feet or more and re- 

 quire half a year in 

 which to reach ma- 

 turity. 



The hard, smooth 

 flints, mostly yellow 

 flints and sweet corns, 

 are generally grown 

 in New England, the 

 small early yellow 

 dents and reddish dents in the northern states, 

 large-eared white and yellow dents of the one-ear- 

 to-stalk strains in the central states, and white 

 dents partly of the strains that produce two or 

 more ears per stalk in the southern part of the 

 United States. 



Because of the need of a cultivated crop that 

 can be used in rotation with small grains, corn is 

 now extensively grown in Minnesota, North Dakota 

 and elsewhere, where but a few years ago all atten- 

 tion was given to the growing of small grains, 

 and corn -growing considered impracticable and 

 unprofitable. The soils of the Pacific slope are also 

 showing the exhaustive effect of one-crop farming, 

 and corn for rotation is meeting with favor. Crop 

 rotation is sure to replace the practice of summer 

 fallowing, or resting the land. By early planting, 

 some of the earliest maturing strains can be grown 

 to maturity before the dry season has continued 

 sufficiently long to prevent growth. 



Although produced so much more extensively 



Fig. 614. Method of supporting 

 seed corn in storage. (Holden.) 



