GOVERNMENT AID.* OT having room to give an exhaustive review of these bulky volumes, we must be content to make a few generous extracts from the same, the perusal of which will, we are confident, so whet the edge of mental appetite that those who taste will hanker for more and will at once ask their Representative in Congress to send them, under his frank, a complete set of these volumes filled with valuable proof of what the Government knows about farming. (Official Circular.) DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE,} MR. SIMPLE Granger: WASHINGTON, D. C. Dear Sir-Last spring at the urgent request of your very able member of Congress, the Hon. P. C. O. G. N. Tightpucker, who in addition to his other arduous duties as a Representative, still keeps himself very much interested in all matters pertaining to agriculture, there was sent to you by mail one pint of a new variety of seed corn known as the Re-election Dent, and we are very anxious to hear how this variety succeeded in your section. Will you please, immediately upon the receipt of this circular, fill up the vacant blanks with correct answers and return the same to this office enclosed in the official envelope provided by a beneficent Government for that purpose. We wish to have them * Reports of Department of Agriculture, Government Printing Office, for the years 1889, 1890 and 1891. answered in the order named, for publication in the Agricultural Report of this Department for the official year just closed. Ist. State particularly the kind and character of the soil where said corn was planted. 2d. fully. What sort of cultivation did you give it? Describe it 3d. When did the corn ripen? 4th. How much per acre did it yield? 5th. Do you think this variety of corn suited to the soil and climate of your locality? 6th. Please, under the head of "Remarks," give your ideas in general on the subject for the information of this Department, and with the understanding that it may be embodied in our Report, due credit being given you therein. Your obedient servant, COMMISSIONER. HARDSCRABBLE, Nov. 16, 18— TO THE HON. COMMISSIONER, Washington, D. C.: In answer to your official circular of recent date I have the pleasure as well as honor to report: Ist. The pint of seed corn named in your circular reached me in apparent good order and in due season under the frank of our estimable member of Congress, the Hon. P. C. O. G. N. Tightpucker. The soil in which I planted it was a dark vegetable mould, slightly calcareous and showing just a trace of volcanic origin. It was deep, rich, warm, mellow and porous, fully permeable to the air, heat and moisture. What slight perverseness the soil might indicate by reason of the calcareous trace referred to was overcome by a very liberal application of barnyard manure thoroughly pulverized, spread evenly and plowed under deeply. 2d. Good cultivation was given it. Great care was exercised in selecting the proper date for planting the seed. The moon was at the full and pumpkin seeds were put in every alternate hill in order that the original theories of the Indian who invented corn might be fulfilled, that pone and pus shall go together. The temperature necessary to properly sprout the seed was closely watched and waited for by my hired man, to whom was entrusted this delicate, difficult barometrical husbandry. He spent nearly two weeks using his weather gauges before he was able authoritatively and unhesitatingly to announce that all signs were right and that the time for planting had come. In support of which declaration, with a candor peculiar to the husbandman and hired man, he further assured me that the night previous to the day he had selected for planting the corn the dog-star Sirius had so warmed up his domicile that he had slept very comfortably without any blankets whatever over him, an unmistakable indication that it was time the corn was in the ground. So the corn was planted. 3d. It never ripened. Whether the season was too short or the soil too rich, or whether the failure is to be attributed to some middle ground of chemical imbecility and impotency of the earth, it is impossible for me to accurately determine. 4th. Calculating the quantity that might have been raised on an acre from the amount gathered or harvested from this pint, I should estimate its average yield per acre as from two to three nubbins. 5th. In this jury trial, so to speak, the corn was completely non-suited, but probably the fault of losing the suit is not wholly to be laid to the character of the corn, for the character of this section of the country, like many of its inhabitants, is not wholly above reproach, and our linen as a corn-producing country, I will frankly confess, is not as pure and unspotted as I hear it is in the bottom lands of the Wabash, where one hundred bushels per acre is not considered a large yield. 6th. Under the head of "Remarks," I will further say that this sort of corn may be, and probably is, an exceedingly useful seed for a member of Congress to plant in the bosom of a grateful constituent; and it may there sprout and grow up into a belief as to his eminent fitness for the place, and be an instrumentality potent for his re-election, but as a cereal to appease the hunger or tickle the palate of man, or to promote the oleaginous growth of a healthy hog, I am constrained, though pained, to be obliged to say that like the Department of Agriculture itself, this specimen of corn is, in my judgment, a first-class humbug. Your obedient servant, SIMPLE GRANGEP.. |