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interesting General Facts About Corn 
Four hundred and forty-seven years ago, on November 5, 1492, two Spaniards 
whom Christopher Columbus had delegated to explore the interior of Cuba returned 
with a report of ‘‘a sort of grain they call maiz which was well tasted, bak’d, dry’d and 
made into flour.’”’ And so was introduced to the white man a plant which has since be- 
come, from the standpoint of total production, the second most important food plant 
in the world, a cereal treasure of immensely greater value than the spices which Columbus 
travelled so far to seek in his search for a westward route to India. 
Today maize or Indian corn is grown in every state of the United States, in every 
suitable agricultural region on the globe; and a crop of corn is maturing somewhere in 
the world every month of the year. It grows from North Latitude 58° in Canada and 
Russia to South Latitude 40° in the Southern Hemisphere. Fields of maize are growing 
below sea-level in the Caspian Plain and at altitudes of more than 12,000 feet in the 
Peruvian Andes. Corn is cultivated in regions of less than ten inches of annual rainfall 
in the semi-arid plains of Russia and in regions with more than 200 inches of rain in the 
tropics of Hindustan. It thrives almost equally well in the short summers of Canada 
and the perpetual summer of tropical Colombia. No other crop is distributed over so 
large an area, and only one other, wheat, occupies a larger acreage. Today corn is grown 
on more than 200 million acres of land and produces an annual crop exceeding four 
billion bushels. 
The Russians have already collected more than 8,000 varieties and it is doubtful 
whether their collection is by any means complete. 
There are early-maturing varieties such as the Gaspe Flint from the Gaspe Peninsula 
in Canada, or Cinquantino from the Pyrennes Mountains of Spain, which mature in 
60 to 70 days. There are very late varieties from Colombia that require ten or eleven 
months to reach maturity. The number of leaves varies from eight to forty-eight, the 
height of stalk from less than two feet to more than twenty, and the number of stalks 
produced by a single seed ranges from one to twelve. Size of ear varies from the diminu- 
tive ears of some of the pop corn varieties, which are no larger than a man’s thumb, 
to the gigantic corn grown in the Jala Valley of Mexico, which produces ears measuring, 
with the shucks still attached, three feet in length, and stalks so tall that the ears may 
be harvested from horseback and so stiff and strong that they are sometimes used for 
pickets in stockade enclosures for domestic animals. — Bulletin No. 574, Texas Agri- 
cultural Experiment Station. 
Ep. F. MANGELSDORE & BRO..ike 
. GROWERS & WHOLESALERS HYBRID CORN 
Wholesale Field Seeds 
Fl SEED 
Main Office: St. Louis, Mo. wae Branch: Atchison, Kans. 
See Local Dealer: 

