LETTER TO BOYS AND GIRLS

Dear Boys and Girls of the Open Country:

Sometimes the longing to be a boy again and to be out in the country comes to me very strongly. Of course that is not possible, so the next best thing is to write to country boys and country girls. That is why I am writing to you to-night. You look upon me as a stranger now, but during this year I hope we shall become great friends. You in your farm homes and I in this busy office where I am in touch with hundreds of boys and girls, should have much to tell each other that will be interesting and helpful.

When you read this letter Old Winter will be here. If you are the young folk I think you are, you do not mind it. You love the snow and the cold. What fun to slide and skate and build forts and have battles! Then, when twilight comes, how good it is to go into your homes leaving behind the great white world, and entering a room in which fathers and mothers and sisters and brothers and friends are sitting around a great open fire. Have you ever heard the message of the fire? What boy or girl has not lain in a half-doze, watching through dreamy eyes the flames as they leap and dance, and building-oh, such wonderful plans? Let us, you and I, imagine ourselves watching the flames and planning things for you to do during these winter days. How many have a good start because they did something this summer? You remember the many suggestions made in the April-May Children's Leaflet last spring? Are you keeping a notebook for out-of-door records as suggested? Have you some one finished piece of work to your credit? If you have, write and tell me about it. I hope you are studying about the out-of-door world in your school this year. Let each one try to make a special study of at least one thing. One may choose birds, another poultry, another trees, another fruit, still another grains. Speaking of grain, is your school planning to have a Corn Day this year? January 27 is the day, and, though there were a large number of schools in which Corn Day was celebrated last year, we want twice as many this year. Your school will be one, I know.

corn.

Let me tell you just a bit of the history of corn, or maize as it is sometimes called. It was first grown by the Indians. When the white men came to America from England, the Indians taught them how to raise Fishes were used for manure. Sometimes pumpkins and melons were planted with the corn. The Indians used to store their corn in “cornbarns," made by digging a basin-like hole in the ground and lining it with clay. The sides were a foot or so higher than the surface of the ground, so that the water could not get in, and the roof was made of logs, limbs, brush, and sod. So you see corn was grown a long time ago, and by a people whom we seldom think of as doing much farming.

Now, on Corn Day each one of you should have ready to take to school the finest ten ears of corn that he can find. They should all be the same kind of corn, and all as nearly alike as possible. A good sample is uniform in size, shape, color, and variety. Make your Corn Day a big day in the school. Decorate the room. Ask your parents and neighbors to come. Have some selections about corn read and recited. Have the girls cook and serve some of the corn foods suggested in this Leaflet. Above all, have a good corn show. Get a farmer in the neighborhood to judge the corn and find out who has the best sample of each kind. Learn all you can about corn, and take away with you the feeling that on this same day many other children all over the great State of New York have had a Corn Day, too.

After the exercises are all over, save the prize samples of each kind of corn and send them to us for our Children's Corn Show during Farmers' Week, February 19-24. If possible, have the school pay the express, for we have very little money for our work with boys and girls. Address the corn to Edward M. Tuttle, College of Agriculture, Ithaca, N. Y., and send it before February 15.

Suppose that all by yourself you had raised the sample of corn you take to school on Corn Day. Then suppose your sample took first prize. Wouldn't you be pleased! Begin now to get ready to grow your corn sample for next year. Save some good seed. Test it to see whether it sprouts well. Choose a piece of ground, and when spring comes go to work and raise a prize sample for next year. Girls like to grow things as well as boys. There is no reason why that first prize should not be won by a girl.

This is a long letter and it is time for me to stop. Read everything in this Leaflet carefully. I know you will be interested in all that is said about poultry. Perhaps some of you would rather raise chickens than All right. It doesn't make so much difference what you do, but it matters how you do it. When you make up your mind to do a thing, stick to it until it is done in the best way possible.

corn.

Write to me soon, for I am eager to hear all about your work and your play - what you are most interested in, some new thing you have learned, whether you truly love the great, free, open country of which you are a part. You are indeed fortunate to live there, so close to Nature with all its mysteries that are revealed to the patient, reverent seeker. In the next Leaflet I shall write again. By that time I hope you will feel that I am,

Truly your friend,

Edward M. Tuttle

SELECTING CORN

ARTHUR W. GILBERT

When selecting ears of corn for breeding or exhibition purposes, one should have in mind a well-defined ideal type of ear. In general, this type of ear should be one that will give the greatest yield of mature corn. The following suggestions apply primarily to dent corn, but they may be made to apply to flint or sweet corn as well:

1. Shape of ears.— A perfect ear of corn should be full and strong in the middle part, indicating a strong constitution. It should retain this size to near the tip and butt, thus forming as nearly as possible a cylindrical ear.

2. Butts of ears.- The rows of kernels should extend well down over the butts of the ears, thus giving an ear of better appearance and containing a higher yield of grain. The shank, or the part of the stalk that is attached to the ear, should not be too large and coarse. Swelled, open, or badly compressed butts, as well as those having kernels of irregular size, are objectionable.

3. Tips of ears.- The tips of the ears should be well filled out, indicating a type of corn that will easily mature. The rows of kernels should extend in a regular line to the extreme tip of the ear.

4. Shape of kernels. The shape of the kernels is very important. They should broaden gradually from tip to crown, with edges straight, so that they will touch the full length, and should be wedge-shaped without coming to a point. Kernels of this shape will fit close together and thus insure the highest possible yield of grain that can grow on the cob. If the kernels have this wedge shape, no wide spaces will be found between the rows. Such spaces are always objectionable.

5. Proportion between corn and cob.- There should be a large proportion of grain as compared with the amount of cob. This will be the case with ears having deep kernels. A large ear does not necessarily indicate a heavy yield of grain, and it is objectionable in that the cob, being large, contains a considerable amount of moisture which, drying out slowly, injures the grain for seed purposes.

6. Color of grain and cob.- Good corn should be free from admixture. White corn should have white cobs and yellow corn should have red cobs.

7. Trueness to type or race characteristics.—The ears selected for an exhibit or for breeding purposes should be uniform in size, shape, color, indentation, and size of kernel. They should also be true to the name of the variety.

Mix the corn meal with 1 cup cold water. Add 4 cups boiling water. Add salt. Cook over direct heat for 5 minutes. Set over hot water and cook for 1 hour or longer. Corn meal mush is better if cooked for several hours.

I cup thick sour milk

level teaspoon soda

I beaten egg

to 1 cup corn meal

Corn Meal Gems

I level teaspoon butter or lard
or drippings, melted

I cup white flour mixed with
I level teaspoon baking
powder

Mix soda and sour milk. Add egg, melted butter, flour, and corn meal, and stir thoroughly. Pour into well-buttered gem pans and bake in medium hot oven for about 25 minutes.

Mix all ingredients. Pour into a buttered baking dish. Set the dish in a pan of water and bake until the custard is firm. A knife blade run into the custard shows the firmness.

Scald half the milk. Mix corn meal with 1 cup of remaining milk and add gradually to the scalded milk. Cook for 5 minutes or until it thickens, stirring constantly to prevent lumping. Add the remainder of the milk and beaten eggs-the suet, sugar, molasses, salt, and spices. Pour

into buttered baking dish and bake slowly for 3 hours. If butter is used baking may be completed in 2 or 2 hours. An hour after the baking begins a cupful of seeded raisins sprinkled with flour may be stirred in.

Mix soda and sour milk. Add beaten eggs, shortening, sugar, white flour mixed with baking powder, Indian meal, and salt. Pour into shallow buttered pan and bake 20 to 30 minutes.

HENRY D. THOREAU

How many boys and girls have ever heard of Henry D. Thoreau? Ask your teacher to read what is said of this great naturalist in the Teachers' Leaflet for September. Have some one in your class read the following extract from Thoreau's Journal:

Jan. 3. Monday. It is pleasant when one can relieve the grossness of the kitchen and the table by the simple beauty of his repast, so that there may be anything in it to attract the eye of the artist even. I have been popping corn to-night, which is only a more rapid blossoming of the seed under a greater than July heat. The popped corn is a perfect winter flower, hinting of anemones. For this little grace man has, mixed in with the vulgarness of his repast, he may well thank his stars. The law by which flowers unfold their petals seems only to have operated more suddenly under the intense heat. It looks like a sympathy in this seed of the corn with its sisters of the vegetable kingdom, as if by preference it assumed the flower form rather than the crystalline. Here has bloomed for my repast such a delicate blossom as will soon spring by the wallsides. And this is as it should be. Why should not Nature revel sometimes, and genially relax and make herself familiar at my board? I would have my house a bower fit to entertain her. It is a feast of such innocence as might have snowed down. By my warm hearth sprang these cerealious blossoms; here was the bank where they grew.

"Methinks some such visible token of approval would always accompany the simple and healthy repast. There would be such a smiling and blessing upon it. Our appetite should always be so related to our taste, and the board we spread for its gratification be an epitome of the universal table which Nature sets by hill and stream for her dumb pensioners."