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LETTERS FROM ALABAMA, 
LETTER VI, 
July 1st. 
You must not expect from me anything like 
a continuous narrative. Story ! why, bless you, 
I have none to tell, Sir ! ” My observations are 
slight and disjointed ; peeps through Nature’s key- 
hole at her recondite mysteries ; — passages in 
the life of a spider; ” — unpublished memoirs of 
a beetle ; ” — notes of the domestic economy of a 
fly : ” — and you must take them for so much as 
they are worth. 
The Indian Corn {Zea mays) is in all its glory; 
few plants have a more noble appearance than the 
variety of maize cultivated here ; the northern corn 
is a pigmy to it. It grows to the height of ten 
feet ; the stem strong and thick, surrounded and 
partially enveloped in its large flag-like leaves, 
here and there the swelling ears projecting from 
the stalk, each enclosed in its membranous sheath, 
from the extremity of which the pendulous shining 
filaments hang out, called the silk, and which 
are the pistils of the female flowers ; and the tall 
elegant spike of male flowers, called the tassel, 
crowns the whole. The full-ripe ears are often 
nearly a foot in length, and seven or eight inches 
in circumference; the grains are very closely set, 
and in growing pinch each other up into a square 
