£6 1s. per acre profit.

In Northern Ohio and in Illinois the cost of production averages twenty cents per bushel.

The mode of cultivation in Connecticut and the New England States has been thus described to me by Mr. L. Durand, an experienced agriculturist:—If the soil selected is light and mellow, it should be ploughed and subsoiled in the spring, first spreading on the coarse unfermented manure which is to be ploughed in. For marking the rows for planting, a "corn marker" may be used to advantage. It is made by taking a piece of scantling, three inches square and ten to twelve feet long, with teeth of hickory or white oak inserted at distances of two to four feet, according to the width designed for the rows. Then an old pair of waggon-thills and a pair of old plough-handles are put to it, and your marker is done. With a good horse to draw this implement, the ground may be made ready for planting very rapidly. It is better to leave the ground flat than to ridge it, for the latter mode has no advantage, except when the ground is wet. The difference in the two modes is chiefly this:—When the ground is ridged, the corn being planted between the edges of the furrows, it comes immediately in contact with the manure, springs up and grows rapidly the fore part of the season. When the ground is left flat, and the manure turned under the furrows, the corn will often look feeble at first, and in growth will frequently be much behind that on the ridges; and the inference early in the season is, that the ridged ground will give the best crop, but as soon as the roots of the corn on the flat ground get hold of the manure (say about the 20th of July), the corn will shoot rapidly ahead, and the full force of the manure will be given to the stalk just at the time of forming the grain. Corn cultivated in this way, if the soil is deeply tilled, will often keep green, while that on ridges is dried up.

Many farmers, at planting, shell the corn off the cob, and plant it dry. Others soak it a few days in warm water. But when the seed is only treated in this way, it is very likely to be pulled up by birds and injured by worms. The best way to prevent this is to first soak the corn in a strong solution of saltpetre; then take a quantity of tar, and having warmed it over a fire, pour it on the corn, and stir with a stick or paddle till the grain is all smeared with the tar; then add gypsum or plaster till the corn will separate freely, and no birds will touch the grain.

In harvesting the following will be found a good plan:—Let two hands take five rows, cutting the corn close to the ground. A hill should be left standing to form the centre of the shock, placing the stalks round it, so that they may not lie on the ground. After the shock is made of sufficient size, take a band of straw, and having turned down the tops of the stalks, bind them firmly, and the work is done.

Maize may be cut as soon as the centre of the grain is glazed, even if the stalks are green. There will be sufficient nutriment in the stalk to perfect the ear, and the fodder is much better than when it gets dry before it is cut. If the shocks are well put up, they may stand four or five weeks. The corn may then be knocked out, and the fodder secured for winter use.

The report of the Ohio Board of Agriculture for 1849, contains many interesting statements in reference to maize culture, made by the officers of numerous county agricultural societies. In Miami county, 2,030,670 bushels were grown, at an average yield of fifty-five bushels per acre. Three varieties are cultivated: the common gourd seed, for cattle; the yellow Kentucky, for hogs and distilling; and the white, for grinding and exportation. According to the returns from Green county, which produced 1,250,000 bushels of corn in 1849, "a regular rotation of clover, corn, wheat, and clover again, is best for corn; and no crop pays better for extra culture." The Harrison county Agricultural Society reports the pork crop at 4,800,000 pounds; and it gave its first premium for corn to Mr. S.B. Lukens, whose statement is as follows:—

Whether the statement be true to the letter or not, it shows conclusively the great value of a rich soil for making cheap corn. The Board of Agriculture estimates the crop of Ohio last year at 70,000,000 of bushels. Taking the United States as a whole, probably the crop of corn was never better than in the year 1849. One that has rich land needs only to plough it deep and well, plant in season, and cultivate the earth properly with a plough or cultivator, to secure the growth of a generous crop. On poor soils the case is very different.

To raise a good crop of corn on poor land, and at the least possible expense, requires some science and much skill in the art of tillage. Take the same field to operate in, and one farmer will grow 100 bushels of corn at half the cost per bushel that another will expend in labor, which is money. It unfortunately happens that very skilful farmers are few in number, in comparison with those who have failed to study and practice all attainable improvements. To produce cheap corn on poor land, one needs a clear understanding of what elements of the crop air and water will furnish, and what they cannot supply. It should be remembered that the atmosphere is precisely the same over ground which yields 100 bushels of corn per acre, that it is over that which produces only five bushels per acre. Now, the whole matter which forms the stems, leaves, roots, cobs, and seeds of corn, where the crop is 100 bushels per acre, is not part and parcel of the soil. A harvest equal to fifty bushels per acre can be obtained without consuming over ten per cent, of earth, as compared with the weight of the crop. No plant can imbibe more of the substance of the soil in which it grows, than is dissolved in water, or rendered gaseous by the decomposition of mould.

The quantity of matter dissolved, whether organic or inorganic, during the few weeks in which corn plants organise the bulk of their solids, is small. From 93 to 97 parts in 100 of the dry matter, in a mature, perfect plant, including its seeds, cob, stems, leaves, and roots, are carbon (charcoal) and the elements of water. It is not only an important, but an exceedingly instructive fact, that the most effective fertilisers known in agriculture are those that least abound in the elements of water and carbon. The unleached dry excrements of dunghill fowls and pigeons, have five times the fertilising power on all cereal plants that the dry dung of a grass-fed cow has, although the latter has five times more carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen, per 100 pounds, than the former. Although it is desirable to apply to the soil in which corn is to grow as much of organised carbon and water as one conveniently can, yet, where fertilisers have to be transported many miles; it is important to know that such of the measure as would form coal, if carefully burnt, can best be spared. The same is true of those elements in manure which form vapor or water, when the fertiliser decomposes in the ground.

It is not necessary to restore to a cornfield all the matter removed in the crop to maintain its fertility. A part of each seed, however, ought to be carried back and replaced in the soil, to make good its loss by the harvest.

In every barrel of meal or flour sent to market (196 pounds), there are not far from 186 pounds of carbon (coal), and the elements of water. When a bird eats wheat or corn, I have reason to believe, from several experiments, that over 80 per cent, of the food escapes into the air through its capacious lungs in the process of respiration; and yet the 20 per cent, of guano left will re-produce as much wheat or corn as was consumed. Imported guano, which has been exposed to the weather for ages, often gives an increase in the crop of wheat equal to three pounds of seed to one of fertiliser; while it has given a gain of seven to one of corn, and fifty to one of green turnips.

Like other grains that have been long cultivated, Indian corn abounds in varieties. In Spain they count no less than 130, and in the United States the number is upwards of forty. The difference consists in size, color, period of maturation, and hardness and weight of grain. Of size there exists a considerable variety, from Zea Curagua of Chili, and the Egyptian or chicken corn, both extremely diminutive, to the large white flint, and ground seed corn of the United States. The differences in color are the red, yellow, and white. The period of maturation varies, apparently, very considerably; but it is questionable whether this variation is real, and independent of climate. In the Northern States of America, Indian corn ripens in a shorter period of time than it does in the South, owing, possibly, to the greater length of the summer day in those latitudes.

In Mississippi many varieties are grown, principally those known as flint and bastard flint. The gourd-seed varieties are very objectionable in that climate, principally on account of their softness rendering them unfit for bread, and open to the attacks of insects in the field and the crib. They require a grain, white, hard, and rather flinty—white because of its great consumption in bread and hommony, in the preparation of both of which their cooks greatly excel. When meal is ground for bread, the mill is set rather wide, that the flinty part of the grain may not be cut up too fine, this being sifted out for "small hommony;" the farinaceous part of the grain is left for bread. This hommony is a beautiful and delicious dish. On most plantations the negroes have it for supper, with molasses or buttermilk. A hard flinty grain is necessary to head the weevil, with which not only the cribs but the heads of corn in the field are infested. These are the Calandra oryzæ, the true rice weevil, distinguished from his European cousin by the two reddish spots on each elytra or wing-cover, and known in America as the "black weevil;" also a little brown insect, not a true weevil, but a Sylvanus. This sylvanus, and another of the same genus, most probably the S. surinamensis, attack the corn in the field before it becomes hard, causing serious damage—but nothing to equal that occasioned by the black weevil.

I know of no generally successful method of staying or even checking the injury caused by the insects, though much might be written in the way of suggestion.

In Michigan, the dent variety in dry seasons produces the best crops on sandy loam, as its roots run deeper than the common eight-rowed yellow or white. In moist seasons the latter varieties usually do well. They are grown most generally in the Northern part of the State, while in the Southern section the Ohio dent is principally raised. The shuck and blade are much used as fodder for cattle, in the early part of winter.

As much as 134 bushels per acre have been obtained, in some instances, in Massachusetts; till the last 20 years 35 bushels was considered an average crop, but by a due rotation of crops, and ploughing in long manure, at least 75 bushels to the acre are now raised. The kinds preferred there, are an eight-rowed variety, procured originally from Canada; the Cass corn, another eight-rowed variety, and the Dutton corn, each of which averages about 60 lbs. to the bushel.

Maize is a principal crop in the Connecticut River Valley, Western Vermont, and along the Lake shore; but in the high dividing ridge, and in the Northern counties bordering on Canada, the climate is too severe for its profitable cultivation.

In Delaware there are many varieties, and everybody esteems his own kind the best. The grain varies from pure "flint" to pure "gourd seed"—of course the mixtures which are between these two varieties are most common—it inclines more to gourd seed than to flint. Mint weighs full standard fifty-six, the gourd seed from forty-nine to fifty-two pounds, and the mixtures range between. Flint ripens from ten days to two weeks earlier. It will not produce as many pounds per acre as the lighter gourd seed. Soil exerts its influence over the character of corn, a heavy soil tending to produce flint—light soil, gourd seed.

The corn is "cut up" in the fall, and after curing in the shuck, is husked; the shuck remaining on the stalk with the blades.

In Arkansas, Indian corn is regarded as the "king of grains." It constitutes the chief food of every animal, from man down to the marauding rat, while its dried blade furnishes seven-tenths of the long food for working animals. The large white is the variety most esteemed, and most generally cultivated, for the reasons that it yields more grain and fodder, makes, when ground into meal, whiter and sweeter bread, and is less liable to injury from the weevils. The blade is usually esteemed the best long food for horses, exceeding in price the best Northern hay; the average price may be stated at about seventy cents per cwt. The shuck is fed to cows and young mules, they eat it, but with less relish than they do the blades, which are sweeter and more nutritious. The former are much used for mattresses, being preferred to moss, as they are cleaner, and easier manufactured. When mixed with coarse cotton, and properly prepared, they will make a mattress but little inferior to curled hair: price about fifty cents per cwt. The average price of this grain may be set down at forty cents per bushel; and the yield on upland in some parts of the State may be stated at thirty bushels per acre.

Five varieties of maize are grown in Peru. One is known by the name of chancayano, which has a large semi-transparent yellow grain; another is called morocho, and has small yellow grain of a horny appearance; amarello, or the yellow, has a large yellow opaque grain, and is more farinaceous than the two former varieties; blanco, white—this variety is large, and contains more farina than the former; and cancha, or sweet maize. The last is only cultivated in the colder climates of the mountains; it grows about two feet high, the cob is short, and the grains large and white; when green, it is very bitter, but when ripe and roasted, it is particularly sweet, and so tender that it may be reduced to flour between the fingers. In this roasted state it constitutes the principal food of the mountaineers of several provinces.

In Jamaica I found maize to produce two crops in the year, and often three. It is usually grown there on the banks or ridges of the cane fields. It may be planted at any time when there is rain, and it yields from fifteen to forty bushels per acre, according to the richness of the soil, and the more or less close manner in which it is planted.

In the colony of New South Wales, including the district of Port Phillip, there were 20,798 acres under cultivation with maize in 1844, the produce from which was returned at 575,857 bushels; 27,058 bushels of maize were exported from Sydney in 1848.

Culture in the East Indies.—The growers on the hills of Nepaul reckon three kinds of maize: a white grained species, which is generally grown on the hill sides; a yellow grained one, grown in the low and hot valleys; and a smaller one, called "Bhoteah," or "Murilli Makii," which is considered the sweetest of the three, but from being less productive is not generally grown on good lands. Maize thrives best on a siliceous, well-drained, rich soil. A correspondent in my "Colonial Magazine," vol. ii. p. 309, says the finest Indian corn he ever saw was in the Himalayas of the Sikim-range, where the soil consists of a substratum of decomposed mica from the under or rocky stratum, with a superstratum of from three to six inches of decayed vegetable matter, from leaves, &c., of the ancient forests.

Throughout Hindostan, June is the usual time for sowing. In Behar, about two seers are usually sown upon a beggah; in Nepaul, twenty-four seers upon an English acre; in the vicinity of Poonah, one and a-half seer per beggah. Before the seed is sown the land is usually ploughed two or three times, and no further attention given to the crop than two hoeings. In Nepaul, where it is the principal crop cultivated, the seed is sown, after one delving and pulverisation of the soil, in the latter end of May and early part of June, in drills, the seeds being laid at intervals of seven or eight inches in the drills, and the drills an equal space apart. The drills are not raised as for turnip sowing, but consist merely of rows of the plant on a level surface. The seed is distributed in this manner with the view of facilitating the weeding of the crop, not for the purpose of earthing up the roots, which seems unnecessary. The Indian corn sowing resembles that of the gohya (or upland) rice, in the careful manner in which it is performed; the sower depositing each grain in its place, having first dibbled a hole for it five or six inches deep, with a small hand hoe, with which he also covers up the grain.

Zizania aquatica is exceedingly prolific of bland, farinaceous seeds, which afford a kind of rice in Canada and North-West America, where it abounds wild in all the shallow streams. The seeds contribute essentially to the support of the wandering tribes of Indians, and feed immense flocks of wild swans, geese, and other water fowl. Pinkerton says, this plant seems intended to become the bread-corn of the North. Two other species of Zizania are common in the United States of America.

Rice, the chief food, perhaps, of one-third of the human race, possesses the advantage attending wheat, maize, and other grains, of preserving plenty during the fluctuations of trade, and is also susceptible of cultivation on land too low and moist for the production of most other useful plants. Although cultivated principally within the tropics, it flourishes well beyond, producing even heavier and better filled grain. Like many other plants in common use, it is now found wild [it is to be understood that the wild rice, or water oat (Zizania aquatica), already referred to, which grows along the muddy shores of tide waters, is a distinct plant from the common rice, and should not be confounded with it], nor is its native country known. Linnæus considers it a native of Ethiopia, while others regard it of Asiatic origin.

The chief variety of this cereal is cultivated throughout the torrid zone, wherever there is a plentiful supply of water, and it will mature, under favorable circumstances, in the Eastern continent, as high as the 45th parallel of north latitude, and as far south as the 38th. On the Atlantic side of the Western continent, it will flourish as far north as latitude 38 degrees, and to a corresponding parallel south. On the Western coast of America, it will grow so far north as 40 or more degrees. Its general culture is principally confined to India, China, Japan, Ceylon, Madagascar, Eastern Africa, the South of Europe, the Southern portions of the United States, the Spanish Main, Brazil, and the Valley of Parana and Uruguay.

In 1834, 29,583 bags of rice were shipped from Maranham, but I am not aware what have been the exports since.

This grain was first introduced into Virginia by Sir William Berkeley, in 1647, who received half a bushel of seed, from which he raised sixteen bushels of excellent rice, most or all of which was sown the following year. It is also stated that a Dutch brig, from Madagascar, came to Charleston in 1694, and left about a peck of paddy (rice in the husk), with Governor Thomas Smith, who distributed it among his friends for cultivation. Another account of its introduction into Carolina is, that Ashley was encouraged to send a bag of seed rice to that province, from the crops of which sixty tons were shipped to England in 1698. It soon after became the chief staple of the colony. Its culture was introduced into Louisiana in 1718, by the "Company of the West."

The present culture of rice in the United States is chiefly confined to South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas. The yield per acre varies from twenty to sixty bushels, weighing from forty-five to forty-eight pounds when cleaned. Under favorable circumstances as many as ninety bushels to an acre have been raised.

Judge Dougherty, who resides near the borders of Henderson county, Texas, has raised a crop of several hundred bushels of upland rice. The crop averages thirty bushels to the acre. He thinks rice can be raised there as easily as Indian corn, and will be far more profitable.

Another variety is cultivated in America to a limited extent, called Cochin-China, dry, or mountain rice, from its adaptation to a dry soil, without irrigation. It will grow several degrees further north or south than the Carolina rice, and has been cultivated with success in the Northern provinces of Hungary, China, Westphalia, Virginia and Maryland; but the yield is much less than that already stated, being only fifteen to twenty bushels to an acre. It was first introduced into Charleston, from Canton, by John Brodly Blake, in 1772.

The American crop of rice in 1848, reached 162,058 tierces in market, and of these 160,330 tierces were exported from South Carolina. The largest rice crop grown in South Carolina for the past thirty years, was in 1847, when 192,462 tierces were raised; 140,000 to 150,000 is about the average, and it has only exceeded 170,000 on four occasions.

According to the census of 1840, the rice crop of the United States amounted to 80,841,422 lbs.; in 1850, 215,312,710 lbs.

Rice being an aquatic plant, is best grown in low moist lands, that are easily inundated.

The ground is ploughed superficially, and divided into squares of from twenty to thirty yards in the sides, separated from each other by dykes of earth about two feet in height, and sufficiently broad for a man to walk upon. These dykes are for retaining the water when it is required, and to permit of its being drawn off when the inundation is no longer necessary. The ground prepared, the water is let on, and kept at a certain height in the several compartments of the rice field, and the seedsman goes to work. The rice that is to be used as seed must have been kept in the husk; it is put into a sack, which is immersed in the water until the grain swells and shows signs of germination; the seedsman, walking through the inundated field, scatters the seed with his hand, as usual; the rice immediately sinks to the bottom, and many even penetrate to a certain depth in the mud. In Piedmont, where the sowing takes place at the beginning of April, they generally use about fifty-five pounds of seed per acre. The rice begins to show itself above the surface of the water at the end of a fortnight; as the plant grows, the depth of the water is increased, so that the stalks may not bend with their own weight. About the middle of June this disposition is no longer to be apprehended; the rice is not so flexible as it was, so that the water can be drawn off for a few days to permit hoeing; after which the water is again let on, and maintained to the height of the plant. In July it is usual to top the stalks, an operation which renders the flowering almost simultaneous.

Rice generally flowers in the beginning of the month of August, and a fortnight later the grain begins to form. It is at this period especially that the stalks require to be supported, and this is effectually done by keeping the water at about half their height. The rice field is emptied when the straw turns yellow. The harvest generally takes place at the end of September. In the Isle of France rice is cultivated in very damp soils, upon which a great deal of rain falls, but which are not flooded, as in other tropical countries: but the process is not so certain nor the crop so great, as when inundation is employed. In Piedmont the usual return of a rice field is reckoned at about fifty for one. At Munzo, in New Granada, the paddy fields which are not inundated, under the influence of a mean temperature of 26 deg. centrigrade (79.0 deg. Fahrenheit), yield 100 for 1.—(Simmonds's "Colonial Magazine," vol. xi., p. 92.)

No portion of the globe is better adapted to the growth of this grain than the delta of the Mississippi. The river is always "up and ready" to do the all-important duty of irrigation in March, April, May, and June, in which period of the year the crop ought to be made; and I am informed, and doubt not, that two cuttings can be obtained from the same plants, between March and the killing frosts of the succeeding November.

The following is the mode of culture for rice in Carolina:—It is sowed as soon as it conveniently can be after the vernal equinox, from which period until the middle, and even the last of May, is the usual time of putting it in the ground. It grows best in low marshy land, and should be sowed in furrows twelve inches asunder; it requires to be flooded, and thrives best if six inches under water; the water is occasionally drained off, and turned on again to overflow it, for three or four times.

Husking it requires a different and particular operation, in a mill made for that purpose. This mill is constructed of two large flat wooden cylinders, formed like mill-stones, with channels or furrows cut therein, diverging in an oblique direction from the centre to the circumference, made of a heavy and exceedingly hard timber, called lightwood, which is the knots of the pitch pine. This is turned with the hand, like the common hand-mills. After the rice is thus cleared of the husks, it is again winnowed, when it is fit for exportation.

A bushel of rice will weigh about sixty or sixty-six pounds, and an acre of middling land will produce twenty-five bushels.

Various machines have been contrived for cleaning rice, of which one secured by patent to Mr. M. Wilson, in 1826, and thus described by Dr. Ure, may be regarded as a fair specimen:—It consists of an oblong hollow cylinder, laid in an inclined position, having a great many teeth stuck in its internal surface, and a central shaft, also furnished with teeth. By the rapid revolution of the shaft, its teeth are carried across the intervals of those of the cylinder, with the effect of parting the grains of rice, and detaching whatever husks or impurities may adhere to them. A hopper is set above to receive the rice, and conduct it down into the clean cylinder. About eighty teeth are supposed to be set in the cylinder, projecting so as to reach very nearly the central shaft, in which there is a corresponding number of teeth, that pass freely between the former.