NATURE OF CORN.
By corn, in its enlarged sense, the farmer means all such crops as are
grown for their seeds; so that all kinds of grain and pulse, such as
peas and beans, belong to the corn crop, as distinguished from roots and
green crops. In America the word “corn” is restricted to maize or Indian
corn, and other crops are called after their respective names. Our
dictionaries define corn as “seeds which grow in ears, not pods;” and it
is to these that the present treatise is meant exclusively to apply,
confining our remarks for the most part to such kinds as are more
commonly cultivated in this country.
Corn, then, may be said to be derived from different species of grasses,
whose seeds are sufficiently large to enable them to be threshed from
the ear and become stored as grain, in which case it differs from the
smaller kinds, whose seeds may be grown for pasturage crops.
Hence, then, grasses afford us two sets, which are differently
used,—one, as affording corn fabled to be the gift of the goddess
Ceres, and so called cereal or corn grasses; the other, not grown for
the sake of the grain, but for herbage, and named meadow and pasture
grasses.
Corn grasses, then, belong exclusively to arable cultivation; and,
indeed, it may be concluded that such have been derived from wild
species, and that continued culture has brought them about, and still
maintains them in all their endless varieties, and also gives us a power
to add to these to an extraordinary extent.
It is this facility for improvement, this capability for forming grain
on the one hand, and running into varieties on the other, which enables
corn to be grown under so wide a range of temperature and in such varied
and variable climates; and it is a knowledge of the laws affecting these
changes, and the modes of action in the growth of corn consequent
thereupon, which will constitute “Science and Practice in Corn
Cultivation,” and should lead to a knowledge of “How to Grow Good Corn.”
In following out this inquiry, we shall, for the most part, confine our
observations to the following crops:—
1. Wheat, }
2. Oats, } Their Origin, Cultivation, Diseases,
3. Barley, } Enemies, &c. &c.
4. Rye, }