LESSONS ON CORN. a 
Exercises —Find out from the farmers in the district whether 
corn has any serious pests, such as birds, insects, or diseases. If 
possible, have the pupils collect and preserve for the school exhibit 
local corn diseases and insect pests. 
References—Farmers’ Bulletins 54*, pp. 18-23, 29, 80; 78*, p. 27; 
537, pp. 15, 16; 684"; 733; 739. 
LESSON XI. 
Subject—The food value of corn. 
Topics for study.—tIs most of the corn in your State fed or 
shipped? Which is cheaper, to ship the corn or to ship an animal 
that was fed on it? About how many bushels of corn are required to 
feed a 250-pound hog? How much would it cost to ship the corn to 
the nearest large stock market—Chicago, Omaha, Kansas City, or 
Buffalo? To ship the hog? Im addition to its value as feed for 
stock, corn is largely used as human food. In what ways is it used 
as a food? What products are manufactured from corn? What 
ones have you seen? What samples of them do you have in your 
school museum % 
Exercises—When you sell $10 worth of corn from the farm you 
sell $3.78 worth of fertilizer; when you sell $10 worth of cattle you 
sell $1.18 worth of fertilizer. Which would be more profitable—to 
sell corn or to feed it to cattle and sell the cattle? Which method of 
farming would keep the land in good condition longer? Have the 
pupils study and recite on Farmers’ Bulletins 56, 65, 97, and 122. All 
these deal with some phase of feeding corn to farm animals. The 
girls in the class will be interested in studying the value of corn as a 
food for human beings, as discussed particularly in Farmers’ Bulletin 
565. 
References—Farmers’ Bulletins 97*, pp. 9-12; 249; 281*, pp. 
18-29: 298: 553: 554; 559: 565, 
LESSON XII. 
Subject.—The botany of corn. 
Topics for study—Corn flowers: Does the corn have flowers like 
wheat? Where are the stamens in corn? Where are the pistils? 
What is the yellow powder that one sees on the ground just as the 
silks begin to show? Why so much of it? Why is dry weather par- 
' ticularly bad for corn at this time? When a cornstalk grows in a 
_ place by itself what kind of an ear does it have? Why is this? Open 
an ear of corn that has just “silked out.” Follow the threads of 
silk. Where are they attached to the kernels? 
se 
(The corn stamens are normally borne in the tassel. The silks and 
the kernels to which they are attached are the pistils. The pollen 
must fall or be blown from the tassel to the silk in order to fertilize 
