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.

“The kind mostly grown (observes Mr. Colburn, of Vermont) is the yellow eight-rowed, though some prefer the twelve and sixteen-rowed, known here by the name of the Button corn; but my experience in cultivating the different kinds for the last twenty-four years, has forced me to the conclusion that the common eight-rowed, mixed with a kind called the Brown corn, does the best; the kernel of the-latter bearing upon a chocolate hue, and the mixture of these two kinds of seed imparting a deep rich color to the whole, when they become blended, and enhancing the yield whenever the soil is in high tilth.  Of this kind, the writer has raised, the past season, upon eleven acres on the Connecticut River alluvium, over eight hundred bushels shelled corn, four acres of which, with extra preparation, produced four hundred and sixteen bushels.

It will never do to carry seed corn from South to North, as it will not mature in a higher or colder climate than that from which it has been taken.  Even half a degree of latitude sensibly affects the maturing of the blade, and renders it an uncertain crop in our high northern latitudes.  To insure an extra yield of this valuable grain, the soil must be highly manured, deeply ploughed, thorough cultivated and hoed, and top-dressed with lime, house ashes, and plaster.  This done, it is the most remunerative and profitable of all grain crops.”

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.

The average yield, on improved land, is fifty bushels; though crops of one hundred and twelve, and one hundred and sixty bushels per acre are reported to have been raised in the county, in 1849.  The yield increases from year to year.  A general and rapid improvement of the State is in progress, and in nothing is this seen more clearly than in the corn crop.  Mossy “old sedge” fields, which have been laid out for years, are broken up, and will yield, if it be a good season, from five to ten bushels per acre; fence them, lime them with twenty to thirty bushels, and seed the oat crop with clover, and in two years the clover sod will return eighteen to twenty bushels of corn.  Another dressing of lime, or its equivalent in marl, of which there is an abundance in the lower half of Newcastle County, will show thirty bushels of corn; and of wheat, if the farm manure be used on it, nine to twelve bushels will not be too much to expect.