SOI 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
Above we present a cut of a Stump Puller which has made some noise , and according to report has done considerable execution. 
We have not seen the machine in actual operation, but have examined a working model, and should judge from this that it will do the 
work effectually and economically. For particulars see the advertisement. 
CORN CULTIVATION—HOW TO GET HORACE GREE- 
LEY’s $50 PREMIUM—THE NEW-YORK STATE 
SOCIETY’S PREMIUMS TOO COMPLICATED—NEW- 
YORK AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE. 
[We are sorry the letter below did not 
reach us in time for the May issue. How¬ 
ever, several of the hints on Corn Culture 
are yet in season. The criticisms upon the 
State Society’s Premiums have weight, but 
we are right glad of a movement in the right 
direction, and we confidently hope that a 
number of those who can afford it, are al¬ 
ready preparing to compete for the Pre¬ 
mium and that much good will result. We 
are always glad to hear lrom our aged cor¬ 
respondent S. W. ( N'Importc .) We put 
him down as one of the most thorough go- 
ahead, reasoning practical farmers of the 
country.— Ed.] 
Editor American Agriculturist: 
While Horace Greeiy offers the very 
tempting premium of $50 to the farmer's 
boy who will grow the best acre of corn the 
current season, our State Society, by the 
multiplicity of the costly experiments re¬ 
quired to take a premium of $75, cannot fail 
to defeat the end it is so desirable to attain, 
to wit: to ascertain the peculiar manurial 
requirements of our great indigenous Cereal, 
Indian Corn 1 Would it not have been far 
more judicious to have confined the first 
year’s experiments to something less than 
19 quarter of an acre plots ; each to be 
manured entirely different, the one from the 
other, except the 1st and the 19th plots, 
which are to have no manure at all. I 
would ask how far will the $75 premium go 
towards paying for the manurial amend¬ 
ments required by the programme. - What 
dependance can be made on experiments 
begun under the stimulus of such a paltry 
premium ; nopoor man certainly can attempt 
it, but if he does, his experiments must be 
necessarily loose and unreliable. It was not 
thus that the great and important Rothams- 
ted experiments were made, to the truth and 
correctness of which even the critical Lie¬ 
big bears unwilling testimony ; and their 
undoubted correctness has been subsequent¬ 
ly corroborated by the experiments of the 
late indefatigable Dr. Pusey. One of these 
experiments alone, that of ascertaining the 
true chemical requirements of the wheat 
plant, must have cost thousands of dollars, 
but the result which will grow out of this 
discovery, is yet to save millions to the 
wheat growing farmer, by enabling him to 
treat his wheat fallow with the right instead 
of the wrong manure. 
Had Mr. Greeiy given out his generous 
premium last fall, in time for the boy to plow 
and trench in deeply plenty of long unwash¬ 
ed stable manure, the competition for his 
premium would probably have been greater, 
as no heavy soil can be prepared in the 
Spring for a premium corn crop the same 
season, and a soil must be at least as alum¬ 
inous as a Mississippi bottom, to insure a 
maximum crop in a dry season. An acre of 
well drained River or creek intervale ,will 
now probably take Mr. Greely’s premium, 
because there nature has done the prelimi¬ 
nary work, in depositing a finely comminu¬ 
ted soil, rich in organic matter, which needs 
no chemical amendment that stable manure 
or Peruvian guano will not supply, and no 
mechanical aid that cannot be supplied by 
the plow and harrow in the Spring. 
It is passing strange that there are so 
many soi disant farmers who dispute the 
eflicacy of fall plowing in ameliorating a clay 
loam. Such a soil, if ridged with spade or 
plow in the fall, is like an ash heap in the 
Spring, while that which is thrown up after 
the frost is out of the ground in the Spring 
will be hard to reduce to a pulverulent state, 
even if it is more than two-thirds sand and 
vegetable matter. 
I have grown corn to a small extent and 
tried many experiments in its culture for 
more than 30 consecutive years. In the 
extra hot drought of 1854 every farmer’s 
corn leaves were rolled up like whips, while 
mine on a clay loam did not even curl, owing 
to the trenching in long manure late the pre¬ 
vious fall. Taking off the suckers enables 
the corn to perfect its ears nearly two week’s 
earlier, besides remedying the evil of close 
planting. 
For a premium crop I would plant in drills 
3 1-2 feet apart, and thin out to 9 inches in 
the drill ; if the suckers are not taken off 
it should stand a foot apart in the drill. In 
hills plant 3 feet each way, 3 or 4 stalks to 
the hill, these to stand 2 or 3 inches apart in 
the hill; cultivate as level as possible, and 
use no plow after the corn is knee high, but 
the hoe or cultivator often. In a hot season, 
Ohio small cob dent corn would give the 
greatest yield, but the stalk is inedible and it. 
has no suckers. 
It is now well ascertained by long, careful, 
and varied experiments, that the specific 
manure for the wheat plant is nitrogen, in 
its compound of ammonia or nitric acid. But 
we have every reason to believe that Indian 
Corn delights in a soil as rich in carbon as 
in nitrogen, and we have yet to learn from 
well instituted careful experiments, whether 
this carbonaceous matter in the soil, is nec¬ 
essary to the Corn plant as a source of car¬ 
bonic acid, or only as a loosener and an ab¬ 
sorbent to aid the soil in retaining that con¬ 
tinued moisture required by the astounding- 
ly rapid growth of this King among our ce¬ 
reals. I have often had to remark during 
the drought of a hot summer, that the car¬ 
bonaceous manure placed deep and now de¬ 
composing in the soil, while it supplied both 
ammonia and carbonic acid to the roots of 
the plant, it also by the water it had retain¬ 
ed, also performing the office of irrigation. 
Thanks to the Farmers and villagers of 
our South towns, as intelligent as they are 
generous and wealthy, for their enterprize 
in obtaining a charter for an Agricultural 
College in that town, as beautiful and rural¬ 
ly matchless as its name, Ovid, is poetic and 
classical. May the experimental farm of 
that Institution be to the Empire State, if not 
to the whole Union, what Rothamsted has 
been and now is to England ; then we may 
not only hope to learn the physical and 
chemical requirements of Indian Corn, but 
also the secret why in a soil rich in carbon, 
the corn ear and stalk alike increase, when 
the wheat plant on the same soil will only 
increase in straw at the expense of the ce¬ 
real product. S. W. 
Waterloo, May 11,1856. 
