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.

The natives remove the husk from the maize by putting it into water with a quantity of wood ashes, exposing it to a boiling heat, and washing the grain in running water, when the husk immediately separates from the grain.

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.