'^■.-* ■ 
 
// //////.y . ///r/.jr. 
 
A TREATISE 
 
 ^COBBETT'S CORN, 
 
 Containing Instructions for Propagating and Cultivating the 
 Plant, and for Harvesting and Preserving the Crop ; 
 
 A.ITS AX.SO 
 
 An Account of the several Uses to which the Produce is 
 applied, with Minute Directions relative to each Mode of 
 Application. 
 
 By WILLIAM COBBETT. 
 
 " Men of the greatest learning, have spent their time in contriving instruments 
 to measure the immense distance of the stars, and iu finding out the dimensions 
 and even the weight of the planets. They think it more eligible to study the 
 art of ploughing the sea with ships, than of tilling the land nith ploughs. 
 They bestow the utmost of their skill, learnedly to pervert the natural use of 
 all the elements, for the destruction of their own species by the bloody art of 
 war ; and some waste their whole lives in studying how to arm death with 
 new engines of horror, and inventing an infinite variety of slaughter, but think 
 it beneath men of learning (who only are capable of doing it], to employ their 
 learned labours in the invention of new, or even in improving the old, means 
 for the increasing of bread." — Tull't Husbandry. 
 
 LONDON : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY WILLIAM COBBETT, 183, fLEET-STREET. 
 
 1828. 
 
LONDON : 
 
 FRINTXD EY UILLS, JOWKTT, AND MILLS 
 BOLT-COURT, FLEBT-STRKKT, 
 
TABLE OP CONTENTS. 
 
 N. B. The figures refer not to pages but to paragraphs ; and the figure 
 denotes the number of the paragraph with which the chapters respec- 
 tively begin. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 General Introductory Observations . . 1 
 
 CHAPTER n. 
 
 Description and History of Cobbett's Corn, and an 
 account of the several sorts of it . . 11 
 
 - CHAPTER HI. 
 
 On the Soil and the preparation of it, proper for 
 the Corn, and on the Season for Planting 
 it in England 34 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 On the Season for Planting Corn ... 46 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 On the Mode of Planting Corn . i . 54 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 On the Siunmer Cultivation of Corn . . 82 
 
IV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 On the Topping of the Corn, and on the Mode 
 of Stacking the Tops . . . . » 117 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 On the Harvesting of the Ears ; on the Husking of 
 them ; on the Mode of Keeping them ; on the 
 Separating of the Grain from the Cobb ; and on 
 the Uses of the Husks and of the Cobbs . 127 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 On the various Uses to which the Grain is appli- 
 cable, containing minute Instructions with re- 
 gard to the Modes of Application . . 146 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 On the Amount and Value of the Corn- crop, 
 compared with that of other Crops . . 163 
 
 CHAPTER XL 
 
 Conclusion; addressed to the Readers of the 
 Register 171 
 
CHAPTER I. 
 
 General Introductory Observations. 
 
 I. The motive for writing and publisliing a 
 work like this, if it had wanted suggestion from 
 any mind but my own, would have been found in 
 the motto, which I have chosen upon this occa- 
 sion; and which is taken from him, whose work 
 has done more to promote good agriculture, than 
 all the other works, of all countries, put together. 
 Certainly it is worthy of observation, and, indeed, 
 of censure, that so very few men of learning (I 
 mean of that sort of learning which is exhibited 
 in, or to be acquired from, books) have employed 
 any portion of their time and talent in treating 
 of the means of making an addition to the quantity 
 of human food. Nay, some of them have actually 
 prided themselves upon their ignorance of every- 
 thing relating to agriculture, that first and greatest 
 employment of man. The late Lord Erskine 
 annually attended the sheep-shearing festivals of 
 Mr. Coke, as long as that gentleman thought 
 proper to treat the nobility and gentry to such 
 festivals, and the "learned Lord," annually, 
 upon those occasions, made it his boast, that he 
 
 B 
 
INTRODUCTORY [Chap. 
 
 was so perfectly ignorant with regard to matters 
 connected with the cultivation of the land, that 
 he once, upon seeing a field of lavender, thought 
 it was a field of wheat. To descend a step lower. 
 Sir Walter Scott, well worthy of the first 
 baronetcy bestowed by the present King ; this 
 Baronet, of book-making and book-selling noto- 
 riety, as the affairs of Constable and Co. can 
 bear witness ; this worthy Baronet, in a letter 
 to Lord SoMF.RViLLE, published by his Lordship 
 in a book about oxen and sheep, took occasion, 
 very unnecessarily, and even ostentatiously, to ob- 
 serve, that, as to the business of agriculture, he 
 hardly knew more than the pen with which he 
 was writing. To descend lower still ("where will 
 you stop, then ?" the reader will exclaim), Mr. 
 Adolphus of the George-the-Third-history- 
 fame, or rather obscurity, in pleading against me 
 for one Farlar, before the Secondary of London, 
 took occasion, while he displayed his white hand- 
 kerchief and his genteely-pale hand, to tell the 
 Jury, that, as to brewing, or the sort of ma- 
 terials made use of in that process ; or, as to 
 any rural affair, of whatever description, he him- 
 self had no knowledge ; and that, in fact, if taken 
 into the fields or the gardens, he knew not any 
 one plant from any other 5 which declaration, if 
 made before people in the country, before a set 
 of farmers' men and maids, would convince them 
 
I.] OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 that the orator was fit for little besides being 
 knocked on the head. 
 
 2. When learned gentlemen, and learned lords, 
 and girl-bewitching novel-writers, make this kind 
 of ignorance their boast, is it any wonder that it 
 should become the fashion, with persons in the 
 middle rank of life, to make it their boast, that they 
 do not know what you mean, when you talk of 
 such things as spades and ploughs, and rakes and 
 harrows? It is curious, too, that these same per- 
 sons are ashamed to be thought ignorant of the 
 histories of all the nations on earth ; and, as to 
 "politics" they all understand politics; they 
 would be ashamed not to be thought clearly to 
 understand that which the King and the Parlia- 
 ment ought to do. The constitution ! Oh 1 they 
 all understand that, though made up of a series 
 of maxims, decisions, and positive acts, grov/n 
 together in the course of twelve hundred years. 
 And, religion, now ! what man of them would not 
 be ashamed, not to be thought competent to de- 
 cide, not only between Calvin and the Pope; but 
 to determine, to a hair's breadth, the right and the 
 wrong of all the intervening classes, amounting 
 
 ,to about fifty in number, each differing in its creed 
 from all the- other forty-nine ? 
 
 3. Mr. 'Full, in the elegant passage which I 
 have taken for my motto, observes on the waste 
 of learning, in measuring and weighing the stars; 
 
 b2 
 
INTRODUCI-ORY [Chap. 
 
 which brings to my recollection, that, when I was 
 in the army, inNfiw Brunswick, I was acquainted 
 with a Serjeant, who was a young man, and 
 who, as well as myself, was a great reader ; but 
 he was smitten with astronomy, and wanted me 
 to pay attention to some of the discoveries he had 
 made. " I tell you what," said I, " I do not 
 " care what they are doing up there ; their orders, 
 *' whether general, garrison, or regimental, can 
 " never affect me : study you, if you please, what 
 " they are about, I will confine my studies to 
 " things which pass upon the earth." In our 
 schools, nay, in our universities, every thing is 
 taught, but that which is the most useful and 
 honourable of all ; namely, the means of raising 
 food, drink, and clothing, and materials for build- 
 ings ; without which, and with tlie want of any 
 one of which, mankind must cease to exist ; and 
 without the whole of which in tolerable per- 
 fection and abundance, no nation can be either 
 great or happy. We have lectures upon every 
 thing but agriculture : Doctor Birkbeck treats 
 us to a theory of the winds ; another takes 
 infinite pains to explain how the air is pumped 
 out of the body of a rat ; there are a great num- 
 ber of lecturers to teach us how the veins and the 
 intestines are formed, and how they ought to be 
 emptied ; but not a soul to tell us the best way of 
 filling them. Commissioners of Scotch herrings 
 
I.] OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 we have had, and a Count of the White-Eagle 
 (RuMFORj)), together with a whole troop of soup- 
 kettle philosophers, to teach us how to stew old 
 bones into jelly, and by how little the human 
 body can be sustained ; but not a single man to 
 give us a lecture on the means of providing that 
 plenty, that abundance of good living, without 
 which man had better be dead than alive, and 
 for which our country was, for so many ages, so 
 famous. 
 
 4. The great study, of late years, appears to 
 have been, to discover the means of reducing the 
 most numerous and most useful class of the 
 people to exist upon the smallest possible quan- 
 tity of food ; and, failing here, Parson IMal- 
 THUS has suggested the means, improved upon 
 by the infamous Peter THrMBLE, and the 
 equally infamous CARLrLE, of checliing the 
 course of nature in the producing* of children. 
 The Parson and his worthy coadjutors never 
 seem to have thought, for a single moment, of a 
 more just distribution of the food already raised, 
 and still less of any means of adding to the quan- 
 tity. The schemes of these worthies not being 
 attended with success, schemes for f/etting rid of 
 the people, by sending them out of the country, 
 have, at last, been resorted to, and have actually 
 been brought before Parliament, by Mr. WiL- 
 MOT HoRTON, the patron of the project. 
 
INTRODUCTORY [Chap. 
 
 5. My efforts have, all my life long, since I 
 became a man, been directly the reverse of those 
 of these projectors. I have used various en- 
 deavours to cause an addition to be made to the 
 food, the drink, the raiment, of the industrious 
 classes. I know, and I have always known, that 
 complete success cannot attend these endeavours, 
 so long as the present, or any thing like the pre- 
 sent, burthen of taxes remains j but, a change in 
 this respect must come ; and, in the meanwhile, 
 it is my duty to persevere in my efforts to add to 
 the permanent resources, the permanent strength, 
 and the permanent happiness of my country. 
 In this way to introduce, and that too, with such 
 success, the general planting of the Locust, and 
 other American trees, was doing a great deal : 
 timber will be grown here, instead of being im- 
 ported from abroad : English ships will be better 
 as well as lighter than they were before: our 
 buildings and our fencing will be more lasting: 
 our implements of husbandry will become lighter 
 and more durable : and, from the same cause will 
 arise a greater quantity of employment than 
 would have existed, had I never made a publica- 
 tion upon this subject. 
 
 6. The introduction of the Locust Tree was a 
 matter of such vast importance, affecting all classes 
 in society, that 1 never dreamed of any thing to ex- 
 ceed it in point of value to the country ; but, it 
 
I.} OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 certainly will be exceeded by the introduction of 
 the plant of which I am about to treat. It is 
 desirable that the crops of a country, whether for 
 human or for cattle food, should be of as many- 
 sorts as can be usefully employed, and, if oi grain, 
 coming to maturity at different parts of all the finer 
 seasons of the year. No one can so well appreciate 
 the advantage of this variety of crops, as he who 
 has been in countries where they are cultivated. 
 
 7. AH our grain, upon an average of years, 
 comes to perfection in the course of one single 
 month; so that, if that month happen to be 
 untoward, the loJioIe of our crops receive great 
 injury; and som.etimes the injury is so great, 
 as it has happened to be this very year, as to 
 produce an apprehension, if not real danger, of 
 something approaching towards famine. If the 
 evil do not extend thus far, it produces, at the 
 least, very great distress ; and, as it may happen 
 in this very year also, and so it must always be, 
 in a greater or less degree, this evil produces great 
 embarrassment to the government ; and cases 
 may frequently arise, when the government, em- 
 barrassed from this cause, may be induced, and 
 even compelled, to endure insults and injuries 
 from foreign nations, to which, otherwise, it would 
 not have submitted. 
 
 8. This simultaneous ripening of our crops of 
 grain, causes a very partial and injurious distri- 
 
INTRODUCTORY [Chap. 
 
 bution of the labours of the year. The harvest 
 month, as it is proverbially called, is a month of 
 bustle and of hurry indescribable : all is at stake ; 
 not a moment is to be lost; any demand for 
 wages must be submitted to : to this succeeds 
 a dead calm, in which there is nothing to do ; 
 wages acquired so suddenly are but too frequently 
 as suddenly dissipated ; and, after a long and 
 indolent autumn, winter comes, and meets the 
 labourer with not a farthing of his harvest earn- 
 ings in his pocket. Now, the Indian corn fur- 
 nishes employment until the end, and after the 
 end of October, and well rewards the man who 
 gives the employment. This is one of the most 
 important considerations belonging to the subject. 
 I shall, by and bye, have to show, when I come 
 to the eighth chapter, where I shall speak of the 
 various uses to which the grain and other parts 
 of the produce are applicable : I shall then show, 
 what a blessing this plant will be to the English 
 labourer, and how it will and rhust drive the 
 accursed soul-degrading potatoe out of that land, 
 into which it never ought to have come : but, 
 viewing the cultivation of this plant, merely as 
 the means of diminishing the bustle of the one 
 month, by spreading it over three ; viewing it in 
 tliis light only, the introduction of this plant must, 
 by every sensible man, be deemed of the greatest 
 importance. 
 
I.] OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 9. Much of the ease and happiness of the peo- 
 ple of the United States of America is ascribable 
 to the absence of grinding taxation ; but that 
 absence alone, without the cultivation of Indian 
 Corn, would not, in the space of only about a 
 hundred and fifty years, have created a powerful 
 nation, consisting of twelve millions of souls ; a 
 population surpassing that of England and Wales. 
 This plant is the great blessing of the country. 
 In my " Year's residence in America," I describe 
 it as the greatest blessing that God ever gave to 
 man. It ripens at a time of the year, when the 
 harvest of the other grain is completely gone by ; 
 and it is a thing of such vast importance, that the 
 question from farmer to farmer, living at some 
 distance from each other, is not, " how is your 
 wheat, your barley, your rye, or your oats ? " but, 
 " how is your CORN this year ? " For, by that, 
 he judges of the state of his neighbour's prosperity 
 or adversity as to his crops. 
 
 10. I have very frequently observed, that I be- 
 lieved England to be the richest agricultural 
 country in the world, bating the want of Indian 
 Corn; and that, if it had that, it would exceed every 
 other country beyond all comparison. Perceiving 
 the Indian Corn to require tlie heat of America, 
 and seeing it frequently hardly coming to ma ■ 
 turity, even in the United States, in their most 
 northern parts, I regarded our sun as wholly iu- 
 
 b5 
 
IMBODUCTORY OBSERVATIONS. 
 
 sufficient for the purpose of ripening this vahmble 
 crop ; until the accident, of which I shall speak 
 more particularly in the next chapter, induced me 
 to make that trial, which, upon a scale sufficiently 
 large to obviate every doubt, has now convinced 
 me of the contrary. But, this is not of the scmie 
 sort as that of any of the corn that I ever saw in 
 America, or that I had ever seen before I saw this 
 sort. 1 have called it dwarf corn ', but, that word 
 does not sufficiently designate it. There are, in 
 America, two or three sorts of corn called dwarfs 
 but, they all differ greatly from this : of those 
 sorts I shall have to say more in the next chapter. 
 Arthur Young, in his " Travels in France, 
 Spain, and Italy," describes the great and 
 numerous advantages attending the cultivating of 
 maize or Indian Corn ; and, though he takes it for 
 granted, that the corn will not ripen in England, 
 he recommends the planting of it merely for the 
 sake of its great produce of excellent fodder. If 
 Mr. Young had lived until now, he would have 
 seen, that we can have both grain and fodder. 
 
J^laltX 
 
^ • CHAPTER II. 
 
 Desa'iption mid History of Cohbetfs Corn, and 
 an Accotint of the Several Sorts of it. 
 
 1 1 . On the opposite page is a pretty accurate 
 representation of a plant of Indian Corn, of the sort 
 of which I am about to treat, and to which, in 
 order to distinguish it from other sorts, I give the 
 name of " Cobbeti^'s Corn." The height of the 
 plant, from the ground to the tip-top, is, with good 
 land and good culture, al)out four feet. The draw- 
 ing exhibits a plant in its most beautiful state, with 
 all its blades at their full size and length, with the 
 bloom on the tassel, and M'ith the silk hanging 
 down from the ears, which are covered by their 
 husks; a the tassel ; b, the top; <?, c, c, c, four 
 of the BLADES ; d, d, d, three ears ; e, e, e, the 
 silks; f,f, the stalk; ff, the root. This is 
 a representation of the plant as it stands in the 
 month of August ; late in that month, or early in 
 September. The tassel is the foiver of the plan f, 
 and it hears farina resembling that of the wheat- 
 ear ; but the grains, instead of being deposited 
 in chests in the flower, are deposited in the ears, 
 which come out of the stalk lower down, and 
 the silk receives the farina as it falls, by which 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 the grain is impregnated. These ears are en- 
 veloped by thin leaves, which, all together, 
 are called the husk. W\\ei\ the grains begin 
 to be formed, there comes from each grain 
 a little delicate thing, precisely resembling a 
 single string of raw silk, only the former is of a 
 pale and shining green. These strings all come 
 out in time, at the point of the husk, and hang 
 down, as at e, c, e. The farina drops from the 
 tassel upon these silks. The part between the 
 ears and the tassel, as at b, is called the top, 
 which is, as will more fully be spoken of by-and- 
 bye, cut oif before the corn is ripe. The blades, 
 as at c, c, c, c, are cut off at the same time ; but 
 this also will be spoken of hereafter. The stalk, 
 f,f, is the stout part of the plant out of which 
 the ears come. So that this plant consists of stalk, 
 ears, blades, and top, and, at one stage of its 
 progress, of dlks. 1 will just state here, that the 
 plant does not always bear three ears, but, 
 sometimes more, and sometimes only one, ac- 
 cording to the ground and culture. I have had, 
 this year, seven ears, coming out of one stalk ; 
 but, I look upon three as a fair average, in good 
 land, with good culture, and with proper distances. 
 There are most commonly two or three suckers 
 to each plant ; but these will be spoken of here- 
 after. 
 
 12. As to the naiJie, we English people take it 
 from the Americans ; who, soon after the first 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 settlers arrived in America from England, found the 
 corn in use among the natives of the country, who 
 must have received it from the hand of a gracious 
 Providence. Those natives, whom the French 
 called savages (or wild people), we have always 
 called Indians ; and hence the word Indian was 
 put before the word corn. But, in all countries 
 except England and America, it goes by the 
 name of maize, or mats, or by some name other 
 than that of Indian corn. In America, the word 
 Indian is generally dropped, and the thing is 
 called corn, which word is never applied to 
 wheat, barley, oats, or rye, all which receive the 
 general appellation oi grain. 
 
 13. The cultivation of Indian corn is, doubt- 
 less, as old as the world itself j and I think there 
 can be no doubt, that, in general, those texts of 
 IScripture in which the word " corn." is used, 
 always allude to this corn, and not to wheat 
 or any other grain. It is well known, that, in 
 Egypt and in all the countries, where the trans- 
 actions recorded in both testaments took place, 
 this corn is cultivated as the principal crop j and 
 the French frequently call it bU de Twrquie, or 
 Turkish corn, it having, in all likelihood, been 
 introduced into France many centuries ago, from 
 Turkey in Asia during the holy wars. 
 
 14. Until I went to New Brunswick (an 
 English colony), some part of which is five hundred 
 miles to the north of Boston, and actually made 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 many meals upon ears of corn in their green 
 state, I used to be greatly puzzled by that text 
 of Scripture (St. Matthew, chap, xii., ver. ],) 
 which told me that, " at that time Jesus went 
 " on the Sabbath day through the corn : and his 
 " disciples were an hungered, and began to pluck 
 ** the ears of corn and to eat." 
 
 15. 1 thought it, in the first place, rather 
 strange, that they should have gone througfi the 
 corn ; for we do not say through wheat or through 
 barley, as we do through a ivood, through an or- 
 chard, or through a coppice; but I thought it 
 still more strange that they should have eaten 
 ears of wheat, of barley, or of rye. When I 
 came to walk or ride through the corn fields of 
 America, I understood how Jesus and his dis- 
 ciples might have gone through the corn in the 
 neighbourhood of Jerusalem ; and when 1 came 
 to eat the cars of corn, and to find them so de- 
 lightful, all the mystery was explained ; and 
 when I observed how careful the American 
 farmers were to preserve the produce of their 
 corn fields, I was not at all surprised that the 
 
 • Pharisees, who were, I presume, the Quakers of 
 Palestine, should have been so angry, and have 
 picked such a German quarrel with our Saviour 
 and his disciples on that memorable occasion. 
 
 16. Though I was very young at that time, I 
 had been a gre^t reader of the Bible; upon which 
 the parsons will remark, that it is a pity that I 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 omitted to learn from it that tithes were insti- 
 tuted by God himself. I beg pardon of their 
 reverences, for I did observe it ; but I observed, 
 at the same time, that those who were to receive 
 the tithes were forbidden to have any inheritance 
 in the land, and were commanded to share the 
 tithes with the poor, the widow, the orphan, and 
 the stranger; a forbidding on the one hand, and 
 a command on the other, which their reverences 
 seem to have wholly overlooked. But, not fur- 
 ther to digress, I had read in the 2d book of 
 Kings, and in the second verse of the fourth 
 chapter that, " There came a man from Baal- 
 " shalisha, and brought for the man of God 
 *' twenty loaves of barley, and full ears of corn 
 " in the husks thereof, and said, give unto the 
 '' people that they may eat." Now, I could un- 
 derstand the utility of giving them barley bread ; 
 but what was I to think of giving them ivheat 
 ears, or rye, or barley ears to eat ? And then, as 
 to bringing the corn in the husks 3 how were the 
 ears to be brought otherwise than in the husks ? 
 The husk of wheat or of barley makes apart of 
 the ear ; so that the text, taken altogether,! should 
 have called nonsense, if I had found it in any other 
 book; downright nonsense, or, rather, a ridiculous 
 falsehood. Finding it where I did, I regarded it 
 as extremely mystical ; but when I came to go 
 to " husking frolics" in New Brunswick, 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 which I did, for the first time, at the house of a 
 farmer, of the name of Smith, who had come 
 from Rhode Island, who was a loyal man, had 
 left the rehels in the United States, and who 
 had, in my esteem, the additional recommenda- 
 tion of having brought a very pretty and gay 
 daughter along with him ; when I came to go to 
 this husking frolic, I found that the husk con- 
 sisted of the delicate leaves which envelop the 
 ears of corn ; and since that time I have seen 
 scores of waggon loads of ears in their green 
 state, with the husks on, for sale in the markets 
 of Philadelphia and New York. Now, then, 
 I understand why the man brought from Baal- 
 shalisha full ears of corn in the husks, and why 
 it was that he tendered them to the people that 
 they might eat. 
 
 17. I had met with another stumbling block, 
 in the 24th verse of the 24th chapter of Job, 
 where it is said, that the wicked, though they 
 flourish and hold up their heads for a while, are 
 *' cut off as the tops of the ears of the corn." This 
 puzzled me exceedingly. I wondered how it 
 could possibly be the custom in any country to 
 clip off the tops of the ears of the corn when it 
 was standing ; and it must have been the custom, 
 or else this simile could not have been made use 
 of. What a strange people it must have been, 
 I said to myself, to be in the habit of cutting off 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 the tops of the ears of wheat, barley, or rye ! 
 But when I came to see the tojyping of the corn in 
 America, and heard the upper part of the plant 
 called the corn-top, I saw that it must always have 
 been the universal jorac/ice to " cut off the tops of 
 the corn" in all the countries where it had been 
 cultivated, and to leave standing the stalk and the 
 ears; and, as to the text, which says, " cut off 
 like the tops of the ears of the corn," I ascribed 
 the error to the circumstance, that the transla- 
 tors had, like myself, been born and bred in a 
 country where corn was not grown ; and that they 
 had not had the good fortune to be travellers. 
 They knew that the tops of wheat, barley, and 
 rye, were the cars ; and, they could not believe, 
 that an inspired writer would have compared the 
 ivicked to the ears of wheat. They, therefore, 
 thought it better to compare them to the " tops 
 of the ears," though their readers were still left 
 to be surprised and puzzled on the subject. 
 
 18. I found a fourth text of Scripture to puzzle 
 me even more than all these. In Leviticus, 
 chap, ii., ver. 14, 1 had read an injunction to offer, 
 as a '' meat offering of first fruits unto the Lord, 
 *' green ears of corn dried by the fire, even corn 
 " beaten out of full ears." These last words which 
 I have put in italics must be an interpolation ; 
 for, how could they beat the grain out of green 
 ears ? And how could the ears be full if they were 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 green ? Besides, what a curious meat offering to 
 parch green grains of wheat by the fire ! And why 
 not say whether they were to be of wheat, barley, 
 rye, or oats ? Why call it corn^ when all the 
 other instructions were so minute ? Oh, no ; 
 this meat offering was to consist of ears of green 
 corn; that is to say, corn in the milky state, roasted 
 before the fire ; and no wonder that it was chosen 
 as an offering, for the most delicious thing it is 
 that ever delighted the palate of human being. 
 I shall by-and-bye show, that the general way of 
 cooking these green ears, as the Americans call 
 them, is to boil them, and to eat them as bread 
 along with meat, or sometimes with butter; but 
 at present, here is quite enough to show that this 
 was the corn of which the Scripture speaks ; and 
 that it was always in great, in universal, use in the 
 countries which were the scenes of the events and 
 transactions recorded in the Bible. The context 
 would add additional conviction, if any were 
 wanted ; for the fifteenth verse says, " thou 
 " shalt put oil vjjon it, and lay frankincense 
 " thereon." Now we, when we have roasted our 
 ears of corn before the fire, put butter and salt 
 thereon, and then we eat them, and make them 
 a meat offering to ourselves. 
 
 19. These might suffice; but, while I could 
 add a dozen texts, I cannot refrain from adding 
 three more. In Deuteronomy, chap, xxiii. verses 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 24 and 25, there is an injunction regarding the 
 conduct of people who may be in want of food, 
 which is expressed in the following words : 
 " When thou comest into thy neighbour's vine- 
 *' yard, then thou mayest eat grapes thy fill, at thy 
 " own pleasure j but thou shalt not put any in thy 
 " vessel. When thou comest into the standing 
 " corn of thy neighbour, then thou mayest pluck 
 " the earsioith thine hand', but thou shalt not move 
 " the sickle into thy neighbour's corn." This 
 was a business of eating, and the word siclcle has 
 been used in the translation, from the ignorance 
 of the translators of the local circumstances. We 
 know very well it must have been the practice to 
 eat grapes, as we know it is the practice in Indian 
 Corn countries for people to pluck off the ears 
 and bite the milky corn from the cobb ; but who 
 would have thought it necessary to lay down a 
 law, for persiitting people to eat r/reen ears of 
 wheat or barley ? 
 
 20. In Leviticus, chap, xxiii. and verse 14, 
 the Israelites are told : " Ye shall eat neither 
 " bread nor parched corn, nor green ears, until 
 " the self same day, until you have brought an 
 " offering unto your God." The parched corn 
 talked of here, means that which is cd\\&^homany, 
 in Virginia and the Carolinas, and a very 
 fine dish it is ; and, as to the greeii ears, it must 
 be pretty clear, I think, that it would have been 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 regarded as no very severe penance to be com- 
 jjclled to refrain from eating green ears of ivheaty 
 rye, or barley, for as to oats, the chief aliment of the 
 labouring people of the northern parts of this island, 
 the chosen people of God seem to have known no 
 more about them than they did about the accursed 
 potatoe ; the word oat never having been seen by 
 me in any part of the two Testaments. 
 
 21. But, to conclude this Scriptural history of 
 the corn, 1 beseech the reader, if he have still any 
 doubt upon the subject, to look at Genesis, chap- 
 ter xli. verse 5, which gives an account of Pha- 
 roah's dreams. " And he slept and dreamed a 
 *' second time ; and, behold, seven ears of corn 
 " came up upon one stalk, rank and good." 
 Now, this can leave no doubt in the mind of any 
 man. The ivheat root will send up sometimes, 
 if it have room, from twenty to fifty stalks, but 
 never more than one ear upon one stalk. Wheat, 
 barley, and rye, all send out not only seven, but a 
 great many more than seven, stalks from the 
 same root, but never was there yet seen more than 
 one ear at the top of one stalk. Seven ears is a 
 great number for a corn plant to have; but (and the 
 fact is truly curious) the New York Evening Post, 
 of the 2Gth of August last, records as a wonder ; 
 a corn stalk, on the farm of a Mr. Dickerson, 
 in Bedford county, having seven full ears upon 
 it. And, it happens singularly enough, that one 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 single coin plant, in my field, has, on one stalk, 
 seven ears of corn. 
 
 22. A great many things that we find in the 
 Bible, and which puzzle us exceedingly, must have 
 arisen from the want of local knowledge in the 
 translators, of which I have here given some very 
 striking instances. I believe most smcerely, that 
 none of the translators ever thoroughly under- 
 stood the Hebrew tongue ; and, as we have such 
 a large parcel of learned men, and as we pay them 
 so dearly for their learning, is it not a sort of 
 duty imposed upon them, to take these seven texts 
 of Scripture which I have mentioned, and either 
 find out themselves, or get some old Rabbi to find 
 out for them, an accurate translation of these, 
 and many other passages, in the Bible, which 
 really stagger hundreds of thousands of persons. 
 I have done my share here ; let the parsons that 
 own the tithes of our sixteen thousand parishes, 
 each of them do some little matter in this way. 
 
 23. It is curious to observe how strictly the 
 Americans have, in naming the different parts of 
 this plant, adhered to the appellations of Holy 
 Writ. The fruit they call corn, the fruit and the 
 cobb they call the ear, the delicate leaves which 
 envelop the ear they call the husk, as it is called 
 in the above quotation from the Second Book of 
 Kings; the part of the plant, which towers up 
 above the ear, they call the top, as it is called in 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 the above quotation from the Book of Job ; and 
 the ear, when the corn is in its milky state, they 
 call a green ear. They roast it, too, just as the 
 Israelites did in the days of Moses. 
 
 24. So completely is the word corn confined to 
 the fruit of this plant, in America, that the people 
 do not understand you to mean any thing but Indian 
 Corn, when you use the word corn. I believe I 
 have related it before, but I will relate again, that 
 being in a tavern in Long Island, in the year 
 ISl7j where the landlord, whose name was 
 Howell, and who was a very worthy man, was 
 showing to me and my sons, and to two Frenchmen 
 that were with us, some of the longest and finest 
 ears of his corn, which he had just then gathered 
 in. After looking at them for some time, and 
 expressing a due portion of admiration at their 
 length and circumference, I, with apparent care- 
 lessness, pulled out of my pocket an English 
 Courier newspaper, in a paragraph of which the 
 Editor, in a style of deep but decorous lamentation, 
 usual on such occasions, was sori'y to have to 
 state, that the son of a noble Peer, who had gone 
 to Paris to be present at some grand display of 
 the Duke of Wellington, was in a very dan- 
 gerous state, from having swalloived a whole ear 
 of com, Howell, who had paid very little at- 
 tention to the lachrymose part of the paragraph, 
 started up upon hearing the conclusion, and ex- 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 claimed, " a whole ear of corn ! no wonder that 
 " poor John Bull is in such a miserable state, 
 " if his Lords have got swallows like that." 
 
 25. You have a hard matter to persuade the 
 country people in America, that there can be any 
 nation upon the earth without corn. I remember 
 that our good old hostess, Mrs. Wiggins, at 
 whose tavern we lodged upon our arrival in 
 Long Island, in lS17j when driven into exile by 
 the power-of-imprisonment bill of Sidmouth and 
 Castlereagh, asked me what sort of corn we liked 
 best in England ; and it whs with the greatest 
 possible difficulty that I could make her believe 
 that we had no corn at all 3 that is to say none of 
 that which they call corn. " But," said she, 
 " how do the people live, then ?" I told her that 
 we had plenty of wheat, barley, rye, oats, pease, 
 and beans ; but still she could not conceive how a 
 people could live without corn ; how they could 
 have pork, how they could have poultry, how, in 
 short, they could live and have any thing like a 
 sufficiency of food ; and, as the Americans, very 
 much to their honour, and contrary, as far as I 
 have observed, to almost all the rest of the world, 
 wish for every people upon earth to have all the 
 good things which they have, how many scores 
 of times have I heard American farmers lament 
 that '^ndian Corn would not grow in Old Eng- 
 land ! And, I am sure that the account of my 
 c 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 crop, which will convey to them an assurance 
 of the fact, that corn will grow in England, 
 will give heartfelt pleasure to hundreds of thou- 
 sands of men, who are amongst the very hest, or, 
 at least, the most hospitable, that this world ever 
 produced. 
 
 26. With regard to the sei'eral sorts of com, 
 they are, perhaps, as numerous as the sorts of 
 wheat, of which we know from thirty to forty 
 in number. In the first place, these sorts are 
 divided into the Yellow and the White ; next 
 into the Early and the Late ; of each of which 
 there are several of both colours. Then there 
 are several sorts of each colour, and also several 
 degrees in the earliness and the lateness of the 
 different sorts of the same colour. The white 
 corn is, in America, generally called fiint-corn, 
 and the yellow is called golden-corn. It is an in- 
 variable rule, that the later the corn is, that is to 
 say, the stronger heat it requires, the taller it is. 
 I have some corn plants now standing in my 
 garden at Kensington, which were twelve feet high 
 before the tops were cut off. The early sorts of 
 corn in America ; those sorts which ripen in New 
 England, in New Brunswick, and sometimes 
 even, in here and there a spot of that wretched 
 country. Nova Scotia ; all these sorts will occa- 
 sionally ripen in England with great card and 
 with favourable summers. I imported last year 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 some early corn from New York. I sold the 
 greater part of it, and reserved a little to plant 
 in my field. It is now (twenty-ninth of Oc- 
 tober) not very far from being ripe in some 
 instances, notwithstanding the badness of the 
 summer. I believe that if these early sorts of 
 American Corn were planted in good ground, 
 tilled very carefully, and planted as early as the 
 nature of the plant would admit, that the corn 
 would ripen three times out of four. I planted 
 it year after year, for ten years, in Hampshire, 
 and always planted from seed of my ow^n saving. 
 I thought that it came more and more early, and 
 adapted itself more and more to the climate j 
 though this is contrary to the general rules relativ« 
 to seeds. 
 
 27. But, though these sorts of American Corn 
 are very grand to look at, they are not su7'e as to 
 ripening ; they want all the heat that we have in 
 our best summers, and as little of our wet as may 
 be. The only corn that can be cultivated here, 
 that I know any thing of, is the sort of corn which 
 I have now cultivated with such success. It is in 
 quality nearly as good as the American Corn, and 
 as to quantity, it produces a great deal more; of 
 which however, I shall have to produce a proof by- 
 and-bye. Two ears of this corn were brought to 
 England, early in the year 1826, by Mr. William 
 Cobbett, my eldest son, who obtained them from 
 c 2 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 a gentleman in the province of Artois, who had 
 cultivated the plant in his garden a great many 
 years, but who seemed not to have a veiy distinct 
 recollection of the manner in which he came by 
 the seed ; having, probably, several sorts, and 
 having confounded one with the other. 
 
 28. My son, when he first showed me the 
 two ears of corn (which were very small ones), 
 urged me strongly to cause it to be introduced 
 into general cultivation, as he was convinced that 
 it would always ripen in England, and that the 
 crop would be greater than that of any other 
 sort of Indian Corn. When the spring of the 
 year came, he planted the two ears in my garden 
 at Kensington ; but very little attention was paid 
 to it, and it was planted about here and there in 
 situations rejected on the part of every thing else. 
 Nevertheless, the corn ripened, and bore about 
 half a bushel of ears, a great many of the plants 
 having been pulled up during the summer, and a 
 ])art of the corn having been eaten green. Some 
 time in the winter my son renewed the subject of 
 cultivating this corn, and gave, as a proof of its 
 readiness to ripen in this country, the fact of its 
 having ripened during the preceding summer. 
 I was too full of the notion that there required 
 more sun than the country affords to ripen any 
 corn upon an average of years ; and, I observed, 
 that the summer of 1826, was a summer of ten 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 thousand, it having been hot during the whole 
 of the summer, and during the autumn into the 
 bargain. He did not press his sohcitations further 
 at that time ; and, as I did not appear to intend 
 to make use of the seed which he had saved, lie, 
 reserving a few ears, which he gave to me, sent 
 off the remainder to our friend Mr. Walker, of 
 Worth, in Sussex. 
 
 29. In the month of June, 1827, my son and 
 I slept one night in the same room in the garden 
 house at Barn-Elm . The night was very hot, and 
 neither his bed nor mine was cool enough to permit 
 us to get to sleep, in a case like which people 
 generally get to talking ; and I, in a mood, half 
 between restlessness and laziness, asked him, 
 whether Mr. Walker had planted his corn. 
 He said he had ; and that led him off into a 
 train of arguing, the object of which was to 
 maintain his former opinion relative to the great 
 benefits that would attend the cultivation of this 
 crop. He entered into a calculation of the 
 distances, the space of ground required by each 
 plant, the number of plants upon an acre, the 
 number of ears upon a plant, the quantity of 
 seed upon an ear, ending in a statement of the 
 amount of the crop per acre. He then dwelt 
 upon the quantity and value of the fodder, upon 
 the facility of cultivation, upon the small quantity 
 of seed required for an acre ; and, finally, upon 
 
DESCRIPTION, HISTORY, [Chap, 
 
 the preparation which the growing of the crop 
 Avould make for a succeeding crop of wheat. 
 
 30. At last, 1 became interested, as the old 
 woman did at the sermon, merely by dint of the 
 length of the endeavour to convince me. " It's 
 a pity," said the old girl, *' to give the gentleman 
 so much trouble to save our souls, and we go to 
 the Devil after all." I do confess tliat I was 
 very hard to be convinced ; I became interested to 
 he sure, and I resolved to give the thing a trial 
 immediately, if possible, or rather to set about it 
 immediately j but, I confess, that if the thing had 
 been urged upon me by almost any other person, 
 I should not have done it; and that I did it, after 
 all, from a desire to avoid treating with indiffer- 
 ence that which my son had taken so much pains 
 to convince me was an object of importance, 
 and one well worthy of the attention of a person 
 to whom so many thousands of the people were 
 ready to lo6k up for useful information. 
 
 31. "Well then," said I, « William, we will 
 give your little corn a trial, for it is not too 
 late yet." But, now, a difficulty that appeared 
 to be insuperable arose ; namely, that the seed 
 was all gone ! The seed was all planted in Sussex, 
 As soon as I reflected on this, I became really 
 eager to make the experiment ; so true it is, that 
 we seldom know the full value of what we have had 
 till we have lost it. I recollected however, that I 
 
II.] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 had rather recently, seen an ear or two of this 
 corn in some seed drawers that I had in the 
 garden house, not being quite sure, however, that 
 they were of the true sort; and now, I, who had 
 so long turned from the subject rather with 
 indifference, could not go to sleep for my doubts, 
 "my hopes, and fears, about these two bits of ears 
 of corn. We had no light, or 1 should have got 
 up to go and hunt the boxes which I did as soon 
 as day light appeared, and there, to my great joy, 
 I found two bits of ears of corn, which from the 
 size and shape of the cobb, I knew to be of the 
 true sort. This was upon the Sth of June in the 
 morning. We rubbed the seeds from the cobbs, 
 put them into lukewarn water, and soaked 
 them until the next day, in order to hasten their 
 "Vegetation. The next morning we dug up a flat 
 piece of ground, and manured it well, and planted 
 the corn with great care, at just about the same 
 distances that I have planted my corn this year. 
 W^e had just seed enough to plant three quarters 
 of a rod of ground. The plants were up at the 
 end of about five days, the weather being very 
 warm and fine; and, as soon as they had attained 
 the proper height, thev were nicely hoed, and were, 
 during the summer, cultivated with great care. 
 The crop was rather short of a bushel of shelled 
 corn ; that is to say, corn rubbed off from the 
 cobb and fit for the mill. There was some little 
 
DESCRIPTIONj HISTORY, [Chap. 
 
 part of it destroyed by mice before I perceived 
 it, but, to put the crop at the lowest, it was seven 
 gallons, Winchester measure, of shelled corn. 
 Now multiply two hundred and thirteen, which 
 is the number of three quarter rods in an acre, 
 by seven, the number of gallons upon this tliree 
 quarters of a rod; and you will find the result will 
 be, one thousand four hundred and ninety one 
 gallons, which divided by eight (the number of 
 gallons in a bushel), the result will be one hundred 
 and eighty-six bushels and three gallons to one 
 acre of land, statute measure ; that is to say, a 
 hundred and sixty rods to the acre, the rod being 
 sixteen feet and a half long. 
 
 32. With this seed, with the produce of this 
 three quarters of a rod of ground, together with 
 a little that I got from Mr. Walker, in Sussex, 
 I planted my field at Barn-Elm, which field I am 
 persuaded will cause this plant to be cultivated 
 all over England, Ireland, and even Scotland; so 
 that, in this case, as well as in so many others, 
 a mighty event will arise, I will not call it from 
 a trifling, but certainly from an accidental cause; 
 for, in all probability, if our proneness to sleep 
 on the 7th June, 1827, had not been thwarted by 
 the heat, and the enchanting songs of those sirens 
 the fine English gnats, which are certainly " love 
 children " of those more sonorous and more 
 harmonious songsters the musquitos, in all pro- 
 
L] AND SORTS OF CORN. 
 
 bability the growing of Indian Corn in England 
 might have been deferred for another century or 
 two. The moment 1 saw this plat of corn ripen- 
 ing, planted as it was on the 9th June, I declared 
 that I would have a field of Indian Corn ; and, not 
 being able to discover any chance of getting a 
 field near London, by any other means than by 
 the renting of this farm, I rented it, though, as 
 to any other purpose to which it might be put, I 
 was by no means anxious. 
 
 S3. This is the true history of the introduction 
 of Indian Corn into England, where it will now 
 be cultivated as long as the island will be habita- 
 ble, which certainly would not have been for any 
 great length of time, if the late Kent Meeting 
 had suffered us to be handed quietly over to the 
 Sheas and the Shiels, and those other illustri- 
 ous orators, on the other side of the water, who 
 bewitch the ears and the hearts of mankind by 
 speeches, consisting of word.s that are never heard, 
 and that, before they are spoken, start into print, 
 in the shape of full capitals, small capitals, ro- 
 man letter, and italic, divided and subdivided by 
 commas, semi-colons, colons, and periods ; and 
 decorated with " hear, hear, hear, and thunders 
 of applause;" and with marks of admiration in 
 single, in duplicate, and triplicate, astounding 
 the sight and subduing the hearts of the Kentish 
 c 5 
 
DESCRIPTION AND HISTORY OF CORN. 
 
 '' boors" and of all the rest of us who sympathise 
 with them. It is hard to say how long the island 
 would have been inhabited if this had been suf- 
 fered to take place ; but, as long as it will be 
 inhabited, so long will this corn now be one of 
 its principal crops. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 On the soil and the j^reparation of it, proper for 
 the Corn, and on the season for planting it in 
 England. 
 
 34. Corn, like grain and most other things 
 of any value, grows best, and is most productive, 
 in good land ; but, with some very few excep- 
 tions, with regard to the very wet and stiff clays, 
 and with regard to shade particularly, I know of 
 hardly any land in England, on ^v•hich there might 
 not be produced a tolerably good crop of Indian 
 Corn, which would certainly succeed, in nume- 
 rous cases, on land much too poor to yield a 
 good crop of wheat, or even a good crop of bar- 
 ley, or oats, or rye. I have seen it grown in Ame- 
 rica, in fields which would have borne neither of 
 these, and this in thousands and tliousands of 
 instances. It is regarded as what we call difalJoio- 
 crop, as well as a productive crop. I have seen 
 fields which have lain for several years without 
 producing any thing but a little miserable grass, 
 liberally mixed with red sorrel and other weeds, 
 which Avill live when all other plants will perish. 
 Such a field as this is ploughed up, shallowly, as 
 soon as the frost is out of the ground in the spring, 
 
SOIL AND [Chap. 
 
 which, speaking of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, 
 and Long Island, is some time in the month of 
 Alarch, earlier in some years than in others. In 
 this state the ground Hes until the beginning of 
 May, when it is harrowed, or rather scratched 
 over, several times, but not in a manner sufficient 
 to bring up the sward that has been buried by 
 the plough. This harrowing is generally per- 
 formed in Long Island by a boy, who rides a 
 horse that drags the harrow after him ; some- 
 times it is done by a yoke of oxen ; but it is re- 
 peated very often, and until the ground on the 
 surface are broken very fine. 
 
 35. The next operation is the marking. The 
 corn is there planted in hills, or clumps. Not 
 on raised heaps of ground ; but, as it finally be- 
 comes a hill by the earthing up of the corn, it is 
 called a hill of corn, as we say a hill of hops. 
 Neither is planted upon a hill, but the spot, by 
 means of the cultivation, becomes a hill before 
 the end of the summer. The marking, which is 
 intended to point out the places where the hills 
 are to be, and where the corn is to be planted, 
 is executed thus, a boy being generally the opera- 
 tor. He gets upon a horse which has trace har- 
 ness on, the traces being well held up by hip- 
 straps, and kept asunder by a short spreader be- 
 hind him ; and these traces are hooked on to a 
 Jog, smooth and pretty heavy, and rounded at 
 
III.] PREPARATION. 
 
 the end nearest to the horse, and, perhaps, from 
 eight to ten feet long. Thus mounted,/ the boy 
 begins on the straightest side of the fiekl, and 
 makes a mark all along with his log. When he 
 gets to the end he turns his horse round, and 
 having placed the log at the width of four feet 
 from his first mark, away he goes to the other 
 end, making another mark as he goes. He then 
 turns again, and thus he goes on till he has gone 
 over the whole field in that direction. If the 
 sides of the field be crooked, he makes short 
 marks, so as to fill up the whole. 
 
 36. When this is done, he begins to go cross- 
 ways the field, making his marks at four feet 
 from each other as before ', and the sequel shows, 
 that, incredible as the fact is, he generally per- 
 forms the operation with great geometrical truth. 
 All country people, I mean farming people, are 
 remarkable for true sight in the measuring of 
 spaces and distances, and this is particularly the 
 case with the people of America. 
 
 37. The next operation is the manuring o? the 
 field. A man or boy, with a light wagon, and 
 two horses which he drives with reins (I wish I 
 had such a wagon), goes into the field with well 
 rotted and finely broken manure, which has been 
 turned up, a year before, and has been turned 
 over several times, until it be as fine as it can be 
 made. He carries a shovel in his wagon, and 
 
SOIL AND [Chap. 
 
 tosses down about half an English shovel full, or 
 less, upon every crossing that the boy has made 
 with his log. He does not mind the effect of 
 the wheels upon the rest of the field, as he goes 
 backward and forward ; the marks of the wheels 
 have no resemblance to the marks of the log, 
 and do not at all confuse him in his work. It 
 would surprise an English farmer to see how 
 much a single man will do in a day, of this sort 
 of work. 
 
 • 38. Next comes the work of planting the corn, 
 which is performed in this maimer. The planter 
 has a good large icaistcoat pocket or two, into 
 which he puts his seed. He has a hoe in his 
 hand, a good stout English hoe, with which, 
 when he comes to the hill, that is to say, where 
 he finds the two or three double handsful of 
 manure, he gives the manure a chop or two to 
 make it in a level form ; he then takes five seeds 
 out of his pocket, tosses them down upon the 
 manure, with most admirable indifference as to 
 tlieir distri])ution upon the spot ; and having" 
 raked up with his hoe a little fresh earth to cover 
 the seeds about an inch deep, which he does at 
 one stroke, unless a rock, stone, or a stump, 
 happen to be in his way, he gives the earth upon 
 the top of the seeds a stamp with his foot, and 
 the corn is planted. 
 
 39. It is true that very great crops do not 
 
III.] PHEPARATION. 
 
 arise from soil and preparation like this ; but 
 crops do arise from it, if there be due and 
 true after cultivation, upon which the common 
 farmer in America principally relies nine times 
 out of ten. In England an old ley; that is 
 to say, a field which has lain for two or three 
 years after barley and clover, would do very well, 
 ploughed up in February, and planted either in 
 hills or in rows, with just a little manure imme- 
 diately under the seeds to give them a start, as 
 the Americans call it. It is the after cultivation 
 upon which the corn planter may, on the TuL- 
 LIAN principle, place his principal reliance. 
 
 40. The best preparation for corn, I should 
 think to be the same as that for barley, the land 
 prepared in precisely the sam.e manner, and to 
 be ready for planting in barley-sowing time. 
 There is, too, one very cogent reason for prefer- 
 ring this preparation to that before mentioned ; 
 and that is, that here, you are not exposed to the 
 ravages of the black, or rather the brown grub, 
 or the wire-worm, both of which are apt to be 
 found in great abundance amongst the crops that 
 succeed leys, or any ground that has long been 
 unploughed. When wheat is sowed in this 
 country upon a ley with a once ploughing, the 
 plant is very frequently much injured by these 
 mischievous things. The wire-worm enters the 
 spear, just above the seed, and eats out the heart. 
 
SOIL AND [Chap. 
 
 The brown grub keeps snugly just under the sur- 
 face of the ground in the day time, comes out at 
 night, bites off the plant nearly close to the 
 ground, and re-enters its retreat. 
 
 41. 1 was once going by the house of a quaker 
 in Long Island, and drove up to it for the pur- 
 pose of getting entertainment for man and horses. 
 After introductory matter, I said, " how is your 
 «orn ?" which is the common question in that 
 country. He shook his head, and said, " Now, 
 " William Cobbett, can thee, that knows so 
 " many things, tell how to destroy the hroivn 
 " grub ?" " Ah," said I, " that devil has mas- 
 " tered me all my life-time. Your only remedy 
 " is patience, or absolutely going with a candle 
 " and lantern, and watching every plant all 
 " night long." After breakfast he took me into 
 his field, which was in fact an orchard, with 
 trees widely planted in it, and which, according 
 to the custom of the country, had been ploughed 
 up at the fourth or fifth year, for the double 
 purpose of benefiting the trees and obtaining a 
 crop of corn. It was fine land, some of the best 
 in the whole Island, on the side of one of the 
 little inlets from the east river. The sight was 
 truly distressing. The cursed creatures (saving 
 their right of nature) had cut off the corn, when 
 it was two inches and a half or three inches high, 
 hill after hill, in many places for ten hills toge- 
 
III.J PREPARATION. 
 
 ther. The owner had been preparing himself 
 for beating all his neighbours in this prime crop, 
 and he saw all his hopes blasted from this miser- 
 able cause. I went and raked round some of the 
 hills with my finger, and we found a dozen grubs 
 together in some places, lying under the clods, 
 contemplating the pleasures of the feast of the 
 next evening or night. In a country where nu- 
 merous hands could have been obtained at a 
 moderate expense, the crop might have been 
 saved to a considerable extent. Such means 
 were not at command herej and when I saw 
 my friend in the fall of the year, I found that he 
 had not had five bushels upon an acre, where he 
 ought to have had fifty at least. 
 
 42. This danger must always exist if you plant 
 upon a once ploughing in land matted with 
 weeds or with grass ; and, therefore, I recom- 
 mend by all means, the avoiding of such tillage 
 of the land for corn. If my friend, the Quaker, 
 had sowed the land with wheat, or rye, or barley, 
 the grub might have done some mischief, even 
 amidst such a superabundance of plants; but in the 
 case of Indian Corn, where the number of plants 
 must be neither more nor less ; where the num- 
 ber must be actually counted, and their distances 
 geometrically fixed, the depredations must be 
 fatal. But, the corn is by no means nice like 
 barley : it does not require a previous sheep-fold- 
 
SOIL AND [Chap. 
 
 ing, and several ploughings, and such very fine 
 tilth all over the surface ; it may come after wheat 
 or any other white-straw crop, so that the ground 
 has but a good deep winter ploughhig, and ano- 
 ther ploughing and a good breaking to pieces 
 in April, and so that it has a little manure along 
 the drills, if it be to be in rows ; or, upon the 
 crossings if it be to be in hills. 
 
 43. If the soil be very stiff, it must be well 
 laid up to take the frosts of the latter part of the 
 winter, particularly to be dried by the winds of 
 March, so that it may be made fine in April. I 
 should not recommend to plant it where the clay 
 is stiff, where the bottom is wet, or particularly 
 near the shade of trees ; for, though it will do 
 pretty well in a widely planted orchard in Ame- 
 rica, where the sun sends his rays through an 
 apple-tree with such force, it will not endure 
 shade in our country ; and even in the shade of 
 America, it seldom comes to much when near to 
 the north side of a wood. 
 
 44. Any land, I say any land, without excep- 
 tion, that will bear oats ; not wheat or barley, 
 but oats, or even buck-wheat, may be made to 
 bear a tolerable crop of Indian Corn. Ou 
 gravel, on chalk, however, near the surface, corn 
 will do very well, if aided by a little manure, and 
 especially by good summer tillage, for which the 
 distances at which it is planted furnish most amply 
 
Ill,] PREPARATION. 
 
 the convenient means. There are, to be sure, 
 such miserable sands, such bare-boned gravels, 
 and such spewy white stuff as you find in the 
 sweet valleys of Bagshot Heath. Here nothing 
 will grow, and God never intended that any thing 
 should grow, except heath and furze, to furnish 
 fuel to poor people, and wire grass to furnish 
 food for their asses. These spots, which a wise 
 and merciful Providence would seem to have made 
 so worthless, for the express purpose of preventing 
 the rich from being tempted to take them from the 
 poor, but which, in spite of the manifestly implied 
 injunction, have been taken from them in almost 
 every part of the kingdom, never were intended 
 by nature to bear corn or grain of any sort ; and 
 they never do bear it, unless the means of pro- 
 duction be actually brought from other parts and 
 put upon them. But, 1 repeat, that any land, 
 which will bear a crop of grain of any sort, even 
 an inferior crop of grain, may be made to carry 
 a tolerably good crop of Indian Corn. 
 
 45. One principal thing, is, in every case, to 
 have the ground deeply ploughed late in the win- 
 ter, or in ]\larch, and ploughed again and well 
 broken in April ; and, not to plough in, the first 
 time, any immense stock of grass or of weeds, 
 to generate or harbour grubs or slugs. It is not 
 only in grass-land that the brown grub is gene- 
 rated and cherished. A good stock of weeds 
 
SOIL AND PREPARATION. 
 
 will nearly do the same ; and these, by their 
 summer shade, will harbour the slugs, which, 
 though they may he mastered pretty completely 
 in the case of corn, and that too, at a trifling ex- 
 pense, are much better kept away altogether ; for, 
 if you neglect them, at the time when the corn is 
 young, they commit dreadful havoc ; and it is 
 always to be recollected, that there is not, in the 
 case of corn, that superabundance of plants, which 
 is always found in the case of any of our white- 
 straw crops J and this is always to be borne in 
 mind, when we are preparing land for corn. The 
 fences, also, which inclose corn fields, ought to 
 be as clear from grass and weeds as possible ; or, 
 at least, they ought W) afford as little harbour as 
 may be for slugs and snails, which, if care be not 
 taken, will sally out and bite off the corn, soon 
 after it has come up. A method of destroying 
 them will be pointed out by-and-bye ', but the less 
 harbour there is for them near the corn, the better. 
 Lofty and thick hedges, and hedge rows, harbour 
 birds, which are mischievous, both in the spring 
 and in the fall ; but if there must be such hedges 
 or hedge rows, the greater must be the care to 
 prevent dilapidation from their inhabitants. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 On the Season for Planting Corn, 
 
 46. In Long Island the season for planting 
 corn is, from the 10th to the 20th of INlayj that 
 is to say, so as to get it out of the ground as early 
 as possible, without exposing the young plants to 
 the pinchings of the frost, which is frequently 
 pretty sharp in that country so late as the first 
 week in June. In my '^ Year's Residewce" I 
 notice, that, on the 1st of June, I saw a man 
 covering over something in his garden in the 
 evening. I stopped and asked him what he was 
 covering so carefully ; he said, " kidney-beans." 
 " Oh," said I, " it is good to know that : IMemo- 
 " randum, there are sharp frosts in Long Island 
 " on the 1 st of June ; frosts, at any rate, suffi- 
 *' cient to destroy kidney-beans." But, the 
 Indian corn plant is not so tender, by any means, 
 as that of the kidney-bean. The corn was three 
 inches high at the time I am speaking of. 
 
 47. The corn plant is not destroyed by a frost 
 such as I have been speaking of j but, though not 
 destroyed by such a frost, it does not like it; 
 and it tells you that very plainly by the yellow 
 
SEASON FOR [Chap. 
 
 rolour that it assumes the second day after it has 
 suffered from the frost. It remains in this yellow 
 state till there comes a warm night, and then it 
 goes back again to its colour of bright green. 
 But, these frosts repeated upon it, give it a great 
 check, from which it does not very soon recover ; 
 so that the Americans endeavour to hit the pre- 
 cise time to get the plants up as early as that 
 can be done without running the risk of a check 
 which shall more than counterbalance the earli- 
 ness of the germination. This point of time is, 
 with them, from the 10th to the 20th of May. 
 
 48. I, having this season so long fixed in my 
 mind, chose it for the planting of my corn this year; 
 but I am convinced that I was too late. We have, 
 indeed, sharp frosts sometimes in May ; and J, since 
 ] have lived at Kensington, have had all my kidnej^- 
 beans completely cut off, and my strawberry blos- 
 soms rendered fruitless, by a frost in June. This, 
 however, is not the case one year out of ten, at 
 the most ; and even a frost like this, would not 
 kill plants of Indian Corn. It might greatly check 
 them : it might even make the tips of the blades 
 turn brown ; but the plants would speedily re- 
 cover, especially if well treated, from the effects 
 of any of our frosts in May or June, which are by 
 no means so sharp as those which they have in 
 Long Island at that season of the year. I 
 would, therefore, and will, plant my corn between 
 
IV.] PLANTING. 
 
 the 15th and 20th of April. This will bring it 
 all up by the 7th or 8th of May ; which is about 
 the time for closing- the barley-sowing ; and it is 
 desirable on another account, to be mentioned by- 
 and-byCj that the planting should take place at 
 this time of the year. 
 
 49. Though I state this to be the time that I 
 would choose, we have not at all times the power of 
 choosing ; and, we are not, because we cannot have 
 precisely what we like, to reject altogether that 
 which we may have. 1 have now (29th October), 
 in my garden at Kensington, some corn, planted 
 in the firstweek in June. It is perfectly ripe and 
 hard, though I mean to let some of it stand till 
 Christmas, in order to ascertain to what length a 
 lazy farmer may go without incurring the destruc- 
 tion of his crop. I am pretty safe from birds at 
 Kensington ; from the sparrows I mean, which 
 come and settle upon the plants, and hammer out 
 the grains from the tops of some of the ears as soon 
 as they are ripe ; otherwise the corn would be ma- 
 terially injured by Christmas. I have given an in- 
 stance in paragraph 29, of a prodigious crop upon 
 three quarters of a rod of ground, which was 
 planted on the nhith of June, having been soaked 
 twenty-four hours before it was planted. My 
 large field of this year was planted between the 
 7th of May and the 1st of June ; a part of it in 
 
SEASON FOR [Chap, 
 
 the very last days of May ; and the whole of it is 
 ripe and hard. 
 
 50. But, though this late planting may take 
 place, it is desirable to plant at the time I have 
 pointed out. Nevertheless, I do not wish to 
 make a great point of this; for, there are nu- 
 merous cases in which it might be desirable for 
 the farmer, and very advantageous to him, to 
 plant his corn in the middle, or, even at the end 
 of May ; we all know how, in certain cases, the 
 turnips, or other feed in a field, might be advan- 
 tageously reserved to be consumed on the land, 
 until the latter end of May. We all know, how 
 turnips, by being pulled up and laid upon the 
 ground, might be continued in use till June, if 
 it were not absolutely necessary to get the sheep 
 off the land, in order to make way for the barley. 
 You cannot sow barley, with a fair prospect, much 
 later than the 1st of May. I remember a field 
 of barley which was sowed on the 20th of May, 
 and I remember my father saying ; " if there be 
 *' a crop there, laziness will be in fashion all over 
 *' the country." If I remember correctly, there 
 followed a dry summer, and a produce not worthy 
 of being called a crop. 
 
 51. Now, this is not the case with Indian 
 Corn, which I should have no hesitation, if cir- 
 cumstances demanded it, to plant until the latter 
 
IV.] PLANTING. 
 
 end of ISIay ; and, if the ground were rich, even 
 so late as the first week of June. Vetches, or, as 
 they are otherwise called, ta7'es, might be sowed 
 upon a wheat stubble, fed off by sheep in May, 
 the plough following close to the heels of the 
 fold, and with a deep and clean ploughing, and 
 good harrowing and rolling, an excellent crop of 
 corn might succeed. Now, this is what I venture 
 to say may be done upon any good land, which 
 has not a wet bottom. A crop of broad cast 
 wheat, coming off in August, a crop of winter 
 tares fed off in May, and a crop of Corn to 
 come off at the end of the ensuing October, form- 
 ing, in consequence of its summer tillage, the 
 best possible preparation for wheat again, if you 
 choose it. 
 
 52. This is what cannot be done by the means 
 of any other routine of crops. The vetches would 
 not, indeed, be a heavy burthen ; they would not 
 be any thing like a full crop of green food, if fed 
 off at the time here pointed out ; but they would 
 be something ; they would keep the sheep from 
 the clover-fields and the meadows much longer 
 than they can be usually kept ; and thus, an addi- 
 tion would be made to the quantity of hay upon 
 a farm. You cannot, by the greatest possible 
 care and exertions, do more than get stubble tui-- 
 nips after wheat ; and they must be all consumed 
 by the middle of April, if you mean to sow barley. 
 
 D 
 
SEASON FOR PLANTING. 
 
 You must have a winter fallow for summer- turnips: 
 you cannot have them follow vetches, unless you 
 sow them first, and transplant them afterwards. 
 In short, without the Corn, the land cannot, by 
 any means, he made to produce more than two- 
 thirds of what it might be made to produce by 
 the cultivation of corn, as one of the great crops 
 of a farm. 
 
 53. I mean to say this, that a crop of wheat 
 may be grown one year, and a crop of Corn 
 the next year, on good land, which is not wet 
 land, and that this may be continued for any 
 number of years, with a less portion of manure 
 than is usually required in the present course of 
 crops, and I would always have vetches sowed after 
 the wheat ; the vetches fed off in the spring, and 
 the ploughing and the corn-planting following 
 close upon the heels of the fold until the first 
 Aveek of June, or at least till the last day in May. 
 Observe, too, that this corn-planting comes after 
 all the rest of the seed-season is over ; it gives a 
 little more of employment for another month ; it 
 Iteeps the laljourers busy, and that, too, in the 
 most pleasant season of the year, when they would, 
 otherwise, have little or nothing to do. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 On the Mode of Planting Corn. 
 
 54. There are two ways of ]3lacing, or rang- 
 ing, the plants upon the ground ; one, in rows, 
 and the other, in hills, in the manner of which I 
 have spoken in paragraphs oh to 38 inclusive. Of 
 the act of planting I shall speak hereafter : first, 
 I shall give my opinion as to which is the best of 
 these two methods, and as to the distances neces- 
 sary in each. 
 
 55. Corn likes a free circulation of air, as well 
 as all the sun that it can get; and, if it be tall, 
 the l>est way certainly is to place it in hills ; for 
 that gives air to all the plants, and prevents the 
 shading that rows must produce. If, therefore, 
 any one should choose to plant tall corn ; and, 
 from what I shall have to say hereafter, some per- 
 sons may like to try the tall corn, then the hill 
 fashion is certainly the best. If this be adopted, 
 we should not make our marks with a log^ 
 as the Americans do ; but, with a little plough, 
 or something that ingenuity could very soon 
 supply us with. Almost anv thing might do 
 for the purpose, so that it made the mark sufii- 
 
 d2 
 
MODE OF [Chap. 
 
 "ciently plain. And, I recommendj that, in all 
 cases, where it can be done, the manuring, when 
 that is necessary, should take place before the 
 last ploughing of the ground preceding the time 
 of planting. 
 
 56. If you determine on hills, you ought to 
 place them four feet apart; and then, if you 
 mark the ground truly, you may plough longways 
 the field at one time and ci'osstvays at another 
 time, as Mr.TuLL saw them do in the vineyards of 
 France, which gave rise to his famous book on the 
 horse-hoeing husbandry, and which book was the 
 foundation of all the improvements in agriculture 
 in this country. This cross-ploughing, or horse- 
 hoeing, is very good ; it hills up the plants pretty 
 completely without any hand-work, or with very 
 little ; and it leaves scarcely any thing to be done 
 with the hoe. i t^hall hereafter speak of the re- 
 lative quantity of plants and of seed, and also of 
 the act of planting. 
 
 57. But, in the case of the Divarf-Corn, or 
 ('oBBETT-CoRN, I prefer roics. My distances, 
 this year, have been, plants eight inches apart in 
 the row, and the rows //wve^/ee/ apart, which gives 
 to each plant precisely two square feet of ground. 
 But, I am convinced, that these are not the 
 proper distances. Three feet do not give room for 
 good, true, and tolerably deep 7^/o?^^/«'w^; and that 
 is the main thing in the cultivation of corn. 
 
v.] PLANTING. 
 
 which, indeed, will not thrive well, if the ground 
 be not deeply moved, and very near to the plants 
 too, ivhile they are growhiy. The reasons for 
 this are given by Mr. Toll ; but, I have seen 
 enough of the experience. You will see, in 
 America, a field of corn, late in June perhaps, 
 which has not been ploughed, looking, to-day, 
 sickly and , yellow. Look at it in only four days' 
 time, if ploughed the day after you saw it, and 
 its colour is totally changed. 
 
 58. Now, you cannot plough deep and clean, 
 and, indeed, you cannot perform any thing worthy 
 of the name of plouc/hinf/, in so narrow a space as 
 that of three feet : you require four feet at the 
 least ', and, for the reasons which I shall pre- 
 sently give, I prefer Jive feet, with a smaller dis- 
 tance between the plants in the row. This year I 
 was compelled to content myself with hand- work 3 
 that is to say, with two miserable flat hoeings, 
 which is tillage quite insufficient for Corn j 
 it merely keeps down tha weeds, and it hardly 
 does that 3 for, as to digging, the work comes at 
 a time of the year (hay-making and harvest) when 
 hands are not to be got even heie ; for, be it 
 known to those who did not know it before, a man 
 will never dig, if he can get one half of the wages 
 for playing with a little prong or wooden rake, 
 or can partake in the divers joys or jovial society 
 of hay-carting and harvest- carting, not to say a 
 
MODE OF [Chap. 
 
 word about the beer, which, if it flow at any time, 
 is sure to flow then. Besides, with farmers in 
 general, the digging of fields must be totally out 
 of the question. The work must be done with 
 the plough ; and in the manner which, in the 
 next chapter, I shall have to describe, when speak- 
 ing of the summer cultivation. 
 
 59. You may, with great care, plough cleanly 
 and deeply in the space of four feet ; but you can 
 do it with a great deal better, and with more 
 facility, in a space of five. Besides, five feet 
 leaves room for a small cart to go along the inter- 
 vals to bring in the fops. I have been exceedingly 
 troubled this year for the want of such spaces ; 
 there is not room sufficient in three feet even for 
 the work of topping. The man disturbs one 
 row as he is topping the other; and there is 
 not room to spread the top sufficiently for them 
 to receive the sun and air in order to their drying. 
 From this cause my tops have been greatly les- 
 sened in value this year. Five feet intervals give 
 good room for every thing ; and, therefore, those 
 are the intervals wiiich I recommend, and which 
 I certainly shall adopt myself. 
 
 60. Then, you may place the plants closer to 
 each other in the row; and 1 intend to place 
 mine at six inches apart, instead of eight, which 
 was the distance at which they would have stood 
 this year, if I had not at too late a period dis_ 
 
V^] PLANTING. 
 
 covered the working of the birds, and if the 
 planting of the corn had been performed by very 
 careful and very silent, instead of singularly careless 
 and noisy men. And, let me here step aside for 
 a moment to observe, that a man can hardly have 
 a worse quality than that of being talkative while 
 at work ; or, as the country people call it, moutMjy 
 which is the proper ■w^ord to designate the quality. 
 A man may be strong; he may be willing; he 
 may be handy ; but if he be mouthy, he is a 
 disturber of the peace of the farm house, and 
 vou never can emjiloy him with other men. His 
 sonorous voice is sure to make all the rest prick 
 up their ears : they talk too, If not in the wjiy 
 of emulation, in the way of reply or observation ; 
 and if you let them alone, you have a colloquial 
 assembly rivalling in their way the Catholic asso- 
 ciation in Ireland. Up go the backs of them all: 
 not that they want to rest themselves, or to slight 
 yoiu- work ; but, they want to reply or observe 
 upon the interesting points mooted by the orator. 
 I know a gentleman who says that there is but 
 one thing worse than Avriting, and that is talking. 
 On a farm, I would certainly prefer a writer to a 
 talker ; for then he would indulge his propensity 
 at times when it would be no detriment to me. 
 
 61. However, in the planting of the Corn, 
 silence is absolutely necessarv, seeing that so 
 much depends upon having the pioper number 
 
. MODE OF [Chap* 
 
 of plants, and having them properly placed. My 
 crop has suffered greatly from the want of this 
 silence at the time of the plantnig : if there be a 
 talk going on, it is impossible that the planter 
 should attend minutely to his distances. 
 
 62. With intervals of five feet, and plants at 
 six inches in the row, you will find, that each 
 plant would occupy tivo and a half square feet of 
 ground, consequently, there would be a fifth less 
 lunnber of plants on an acre, than with intervals 
 of three feet and distances of eight inches in 
 the row; but, I am quite certain that the superior 
 summer tillage, to say nothing of the cheapness of 
 the tillage, and the advantage of conveniently tak- 
 ing off and harvesting the tops, would cause a much 
 greater crop to be produced, than with intervals 
 of three feet, and distances of eight inches in the 
 row. Here woidd be scarcely any hand work at all. 
 The plough might go deeply and very near to the 
 plants. The last ploughing would help to earth 
 them up with the greatest possible convenience j 
 and, in short, whether as to air, sun, or any other 
 circumstance, the intervals of five feet appear to 
 nie to be the best. Even, if the planting took 
 place in hills as before mentioned, I should pre- 
 fer five feet one way and four feet the other way, 
 in order that a small cart might easily go between 
 to take up the tops, without which the trouble 
 of bringing them off is exceedingly great. 
 
v.] PLANTING. 
 
 63. You might have two rows of corn at six 
 inches apart in the row, the rows hvo feet apart; 
 and your intervals of five feet. This would give 
 you one plant upon every one and three quarters 
 square feet of ground, which, of course, would 
 give you ten plants for every seven that you 
 would have the other way. 1 am not certain, 
 not having made the experiment, in which of 
 the two ways you would have the greatest crop 
 to the acre ; but, there would be, the two feet 
 space between the two rows to be cultivated 
 with the hoe : there would be that much of your 
 ground which could not be deeply moved during 
 the summer, besides the additional hand labour 
 and expense. I myself will try this, upon a part 
 of my land, but 1 am decidedly of opinion, that 
 five feet intervals, with six inches distance in the 
 rows, is the best method for my sort of corn. 
 
 64. With respect to small bits of ground, wiiich 
 may be conveniently cultivated with the sjjade, 
 and from which the tops and blades can be car- 
 ried off with little or no inconvenience : here the 
 intervals may be three feet and the distances in 
 the row, six or seven inches j because every plant 
 can be attended to : care may be taken of every 
 one, which cannot be the case in a large field. 
 The narrow intervals, therefore, will of course be 
 adopted by all poor men in their gardens or little 
 plats of ground, which they will certainly apply 
 
 D 5 ' 
 
MODE OF [Chap. 
 
 to this mc, instead of that of planting potatoes, 
 when they shall discover that a quarter of an 
 acre of ground may be made to fat a couple of 
 hogs, and give a great deal of good food to the 
 family besides. 
 
 65. I now proceed to speak of the act of 
 planting J which is a thing of the greatest import- 
 ance 3 because, unless this be done properly, you 
 have not the proper number of plants ; the 
 plants do not come up altogether as they ought 
 to do ; and, in short, according to the old saying, 
 " the ship is lost for the want of a half-penny- 
 worth of tar." I have before recommended that 
 the manure, if any, should be in the ground pre- 
 vious to the last ploughing. The surface of the 
 field being finely broken by the harrow, and by 
 the roller if necessary ; and, if you plant in hills, 
 the marking having been performed, you go 
 with a hoe, and make at every crossing a little 
 place about a inch and a half deep, and about six 
 inches in diameter, and there, taking from your 
 waistcoat pocket five or six seeds, lay them down 
 round the little place you have made ; then, draw 
 the earth over them, laying it upon the seeds to 
 about an inch and a half deep, taking care that 
 the earth be fine, and have no clods amongst it, and 
 press the earth down upon the seeds with your foot 
 or the back of your hoe. If the ground, in spite 
 of your exertions, be generally rough upon the 
 
v.] PLANTING. 
 
 surface and cloddy, you may readily find near 
 the spot, fine earth enough to put upon the 
 seeds ; and, if you take care to do this, the 
 general roughness of the ground is not of such 
 very great consequence, especially when you plant 
 in hills 5 for, the hand hoeing which is to be 
 spoken of hereafter, and which is to take place 
 just round the plants, will, if the proper season 
 be chosen, sufficiently pulverise the earth near 
 the plants, and the ploughings will completely 
 do all the rest. In clayey ground, or very stift' 
 ground, where it may have been impossible to 
 get the surface of the field fine, I think that the 
 hill method might be the best. ^Vith hills four 
 feet apart one way, and five feet apart the othe 
 way, and with six plants in each hill, you wou^.^ 
 have one third less of plants than in rows five 
 feet a part and plants at six inches in the row ; 
 but, the seed would be planted in hills, in stiff 
 and cloddy land much more easily than in rows ; 
 because, rows will require drills ; and it is more 
 difficult to get a sufficiency of fine earth to cover 
 a drill all along the field, than it is to find a 
 sufficiency of it to cover the seed in the hills. 
 
 66. If you plant in rows, you must make a 
 drill ; which may be made by a drill plough, or 
 by almost any of those things which are now in 
 such general use in the business of drilling. The 
 ground ought to be ploughed, at its last ploughing. 
 
MODE OF [Chap. 
 
 into lands of al»out five feet and a half wide. 
 This; besides being a guide to the driller, would 
 be an advantage, especially in shallow land, as 
 it would give the plants an additional thickness 
 of good soil to stand upon. Having this infalli- 
 ble guide, the ploughman or driller would find 
 no difficulty in going straight from one end of 
 the field to the other; and, even if the drills 
 were drawn with the corner of a hoe, the drill 
 drawer v.ould require no other guide than the 
 meeting of the two furrows at the top of the land; 
 and as to the labour of drawing these little shal- 
 low drills, one man, with a sharp-cornered hoe, 
 would draw the drills over several acres in one 
 day. Care must be taken that the drills be not 
 too deep ; and that there be no holes in them 
 from the pulling up of clods ; and that they be 
 smooth, or nearly so, at the bottom, so that the 
 corn may be deposited at an equal depth all the 
 way along the drill. It is like the planting of 
 kidnev beans, and as much care should be taken 
 about it. 
 
 67. When the drill is made, comes the planter; 
 and here the greatest possible care must be taken 
 not to have planters who talk, or, as they say in 
 the country, whose heads are filled with procla- 
 mations. There must be the exact number of 
 plants upon the acre ; and these must be at their 
 proper distances ; for it is surprising how much 
 
v.] PLANTING. 
 
 is lost by gaps. Upon the best part of my field, 
 this year, just about one third has been lost by 
 gaps, occasioned partly by the birds and partly 
 bv the negligence of my planters, to whom cir- 
 cumstances prevented me from giving the proper 
 overlooking. This is a matter of the greatest 
 importance, and I beg, therefore, to press it upon 
 the attention of the reader. 
 
 68. That a man, any man, should ^eposite 
 the grains along a whole field precisely at six 
 inches apart, is a thing not to be expected by 
 any reasonable person. That which I could not 
 do myself, I have certainly no reason to expect 
 from an agricultural labourer. To measure every 
 distance would be to make the work too tedious ', 
 but still the distances may be measured, and 
 that too, with very little trouble, and with very 
 little delay in the performance of the work ; and 
 the way that I intend to do the thing is this, sup- 
 pose me to have three planters. I will have for each 
 a little straight piece of wood, six feet long and 
 perfectly straight. I will have it painted black, 
 and have a white mark painted round it, all 
 round it, at every six inches. The planter, with 
 the grains in his pocket, lays down his stick on 
 one side of the drill, and puts a grain at the 
 bottom of the drill opposite to every mark upon 
 the stick. He then moves his stick on and does 
 the like again j and thus keeps on until the drill 
 
MODE OF [Chap. 
 
 be completed. Not only have we certainty here, 
 as to number and situation of the plants j but 
 we have also a great saving of time, for, the 
 numerous hesitations that will stop a careful 
 planter ; his numerous doubts, and the many 
 times that he will stop to take up a grain that 
 Le has already put down, in order to place it 
 nearer to, or further off from, the last, that he 
 has placed, take up a great deal of time ; and I 
 have no doubt in my own mind, that this certainty 
 may be obtained by these means, at one half of 
 the expense that we purchase the uncertainty 
 arising from the leaving of the matter to the eye. 
 The stick is shifted forward with the greatest 
 facility in the world ; the back is already bent; 
 the hinder end of the stick is brought up to 
 where the last grain is deposited, and then the 
 planter goes on again. Nothing can be more 
 true than this ; nothing more easy ; nothing 
 requiring less adroitness or less thought. Never- 
 theless I by no means recommend the employing 
 of girls or boys in this part of the business, nor 
 even men that do not like to bend their backs, 
 for such would be too apt to sloven the matter 
 over after all. 
 
 69. After the planter comes a man with a 
 little hoe to cover the seeds over with the earth ; 
 and this is a nice part of the business, especially 
 if the ground be cloddy ; for none kut fine earth 
 
v.] PLANTING. 
 
 should lie directly upon the top of the seeds. 
 The earth should not be more than an inch and 
 a half deep upon the seeds; but it should be 
 pressed a little upon the seeds, either with the 
 hoe or with the foot. Two men, one to plant and 
 the other to cover, would, I should think, do 
 three acres a day, in the month of April, and 
 more in the month of May. A man with u 
 hoe, would draw the drills of four acres in a 
 day, in the single row fashion ; so that here is 
 as small an expense as the sowing of any sort 
 of grain, be it what it may ; even if the drills 
 be drawn by hand. H you have two rows, the 
 labour will be pretty nearly double. 
 
 70. Ill the case of the two rows, the lands 
 must be seven feet wide instead of five. The 
 drills, however, must be drawn in the same man- 
 ner; but the guide for the drill-drawer will not 
 be so good. In this case, too, care must be 
 taken, that, in the drawing of one drill, the other, 
 which is already drawn, is not disturbed by the 
 feet of the man or the horse. If drawn by hand, 
 the man who draws ought always to keep on the 
 outside, lest he partly fill up the drill that is al- 
 ready drawn by the trampling of his feet. 
 
 71. Transplanting may, it is very possible, be 
 the way to ensure the largest, and certainly the 
 earliest, crop. I shall transplant an acre next 
 year. I know that the plant will bear trans- 
 
MODE OF [Chap. 
 
 planting as well as a cabbage plant. I am of 
 opinion that it is the least expensive mode of 
 planting; and I know that it must be attended 
 with several important advantages. One of 
 which is, that you may transplant with safety 
 so late as the third iveek in June. I have 
 transplanted Corn many times in England, 
 and once in America. I transplanted some in 
 Long Island when it was two feet and a half 
 liigh ; and it was doing very well until my cattle 
 broke in and destroyed it. I transplanted some 
 last year, and it bore exceedingly well. 
 
 72. I intend to plant some corn in beds so 
 early as the first of April. I shall make little 
 drills across the beds, at four inches apart, 
 and deposit the grains in them at four inches 
 apart also. This gives twelve plants to every 
 square foot, which is three thousand two hun- 
 dred and sixty-four in a rod. Now, an acre 
 in the row fashion, at six inches in the row, and 
 intervals of five feet, requires seventeen thousand 
 four hundred and eight plants, consequently 
 six rods of ground, of beds, would be sufficient 
 for the transplanting an acre. 
 
 73. These beds I shall make three feet wide, 
 with an alley between them of fifteen inches 
 wide. As soon as the plants are fairly up, I 
 shall hoe between them with a very small hoe ; 
 and choosing, in the first place, good ground, 
 
v.] PLANTING. 
 
 and not a very exjjosed aspect, for the purpose, I 
 shall, if sharp frosts threaten, after the middle of 
 April, about which time the plants will all be 
 fairly up, give a little covering with hoops and 
 mats, or, which is just as good, short stumps to 
 lay hurdles upon ; for the most trifling thing in 
 the world will intercept the mischievous power 
 of the frost. By the middle of May, these plants 
 will be five or six inches high ; and they will 
 not have received any injury from their crowded 
 situation. 
 
 74. The ground may now be ploughed, and 
 the plants put in with the dibble without the 
 drawing of any drill at all. The furrow mark at 
 the top of the land will be sufficient for the 
 planter ; and his guide as to the distance from 
 plant to plant will be the painted stick as in the 
 former instance. But, perhaps, the quicker way 
 in this case would be, and indeed I know that it 
 would, for the planter to be preceded by another 
 person, who should go on with the plants and 
 the stick, and lay a plant down ready for him on 
 every spot on which it was to stand. This work 
 should be done in dry weather if possible, and 
 shou\d foUoiv closely upon the heels of the plough. 
 This is a thing prodigiouslv advantageous to the 
 plants; for, a fermentation takes place in the 
 earth at every moving, and here this fermentation 
 
MODE OF [Chap. 
 
 comes to the aid of the plant, which has a root 
 ready formed to be operated upon, and which 
 strikes off immediately. 
 
 75 . Do not be afraid of the sun ; for I have 
 transplanted Corn, under the hottest sun, im- 
 mediately after the spade or the plough. The 
 plants will drooj) a little, for a day or two, but 
 they will immediately revive, and will go on more 
 vigorously than if they had never been trans- 
 planted. They are less prone to have suckers 
 (of which I shall say more Ijy-and-bye), than 
 plants are which are not transplanted ; and they 
 ripen their fruit earlier by a fortnight or three 
 weeks. 
 
 76. There is another very great advantage in 
 this mode of planting. I have observed before 
 that it enables you to put the work of planting 
 off, for a fortnight or three weeks, while it makes 
 your crop earlier; but, besides this, it enables 
 you to deposite your manure, if that be scarce 
 with you, all just under the place where the plants 
 are to stand. Your ground, supposing the single 
 rows above described, being ploughed into five 
 feet lands, you put the manure along the fur- 
 rows, turn the lands back again, and then put 
 your plants along the middle of your land, where 
 the drill would have been if you had planted 
 by grain instead of plants j and, though this 
 
VJ PLANTING. 
 
 may be done in the case of planting by grain, 
 it cannot be done so conveniently. Some of 
 the dung would be brought up by the driller or 
 by the hoe ; and, at any rate, the ground would 
 not have been so lately moved, and would not 
 have been so ready to give nourishment to the 
 plant. 
 
 77. In stiff land, in particular, this mode of 
 planting might be desirable, such land is difficult 
 to get into fine tilth by the latter end of Ajjri!. 
 Opportunities enough generally offer to do it be- 
 fore the first of June; an additional ploughing 
 is of great advantage to it ; and, by transplant- 
 ing, all the labour of rolling and harrowing is 
 completely saved. These are very great advan- 
 tages ; very strong reasons on the side of trans- 
 planting. In this case, too, a hand-hoeing is saved, 
 and you avoid completely all injury from slugs, 
 from birds, and from hurt that the seed may re- 
 ceive under the ground. 
 
 78. The act of transplanting should be care- 
 fully performed by a man who knows how to 
 use a dibble or setting-stick, such as is used for 
 the transplanting of cabbage plants or lettuces, 
 and such a man will, with ease, transplant an 
 acre in a day, if the plants be laid out for him in 
 the manner before directed. But he must not 
 be suffered to do the work in a slovenly or care- 
 less manner. He must not make the hole too 
 
MODE OF [Chap. 
 
 large, nor too deep, and must take care to fix 
 the root well in the ground, filling up the hole 
 that the stick has made, so that the earth lie 
 smoothly about the bottom of the stem of the 
 plant, which will not be infested by weeds, as 
 the young plants which are raised upon the spot 
 by grain will be, because, here, there will be 
 plants and not seeds following closely upon the 
 heels of the plough. 
 
 79. When the plants are taken out of the bed, 
 they should be heaved up with a spade, with as 
 little tearing of the roots as possible, and the 
 dirt should not be shaken off. They should be 
 laid into a shallow wicker basket, such as the 
 gardeners make use of, and thus carried and laid 
 down for the planter ; and the distributor of the 
 plants should not be far a-head of the planter, 
 especially in the case of hot suns or sharp winds. 
 If some of your ground be ready for planting a 
 considerable time before the rest ; or if any cir- 
 cumstance cause the work of planting to be long 
 in hand, begin by taking up every other row of 
 plants in the beds, or, which is better, every other 
 plant in each row. This will give the remainder 
 room ; and they will wait to give you time for 
 your manuring, or your ploughing, if it be ne- 
 cessary. 
 
 80. If, by any accident, you be compelled to 
 defer the work of transplanting to a late season. 
 
v.] PLANTING. 
 
 such as the middle of June, your remaining 
 plants will probably be a foot high or more ; but 
 if you follow closely upon the heels of the plough, 
 and keep the roots as little as possible exposed 
 to the sun and wind, you need not even then 
 doubt of success in good land, or with a suffi- 
 ciency of manure under the plants. At all events, 
 a rod or two of plants ought to be raised in beds, 
 in the manner above described, for the purpose 
 of filling up gaps that may be found, in spite of 
 every precaution, in a field which has been 
 planted with grain ; for, in order to have the 
 largest crop that can possibly be raised, effectual 
 means must be used to prevent any deficiency in 
 the number of plants. 
 
 S 1 . I have thus described the several modes of 
 planting corn. I am convinced, that that of 
 planting with plants, and not with seeds, is the 
 best and the cheapest ; but then every part of 
 the work must be well attended to. Whether 
 you plant in hills or in rows, you may transplant 
 with equal propriety; there is no difference but 
 this, that you cannot deposit the manure just 
 under the hills, as you can just under the rows ; 
 but, in both cases, there is the great advantage 
 of time. You may with safety transplant stout 
 plants until the middle of June. I did it myself, 
 in the year 1827, and the corn ripened perfectly 
 well; but if you keep the plants till they be 
 
MODE OF PLANTING. 
 
 stout, they must have good room hi the beds, or 
 thcv will be too weak to withstand the power of 
 the sun ; and in proportion as the plants be large, 
 you must be careful in keepino" their roots from 
 the sun and the wind. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 On the Summer Cultivation of Corn. 
 
 82. Your first attention, as soon as the corn 
 begins to make its appearance, is to be directed 
 towards the birds and the slugs. I have before 
 spoken of the trees which harbour the former, 
 and of the hedges which harbour both. These 
 are to be avoided round a corn field as much as 
 possible ; but, at any rate, the birds and the 
 slugs must be kept off. Birds come by day-light, 
 and are extremely susceptible in the affair of 
 powder, which is the only effectual remedy. Shoy- 
 hoys, though equal in the field to Burdett and 
 others in a place which it would be, in a rustic 
 work, inapplicable to name, exercise their influence 
 but for a very short space of time. The birds, 
 full as quick-sighted as Boroughmongers, or the 
 agents of Boroughmongers, quickly perceive that 
 their guardianship of the treasures of the farmer 
 is a mere sham ; and, like the sparrows in my 
 neighbour's garden at Botley, they will, in a short 
 time, make the top of the hat of a shoy-hoy a 
 table whereon to enjoy the repast which they 
 have purloined. Strings and feathers, and flying 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 rags are of equally transitory influence. Powder 
 is the only thing of which they continue to be, 
 for any length of time, seriously afraid. 
 
 83. Every part of the corn, from the time of 
 its germination, till it becomes flower ; blades, 
 blossoms, stalks, have great sweetness in them. 
 We know that fowls of all sorts eat grass with 
 as much avidity as pigs or sheep do. All birds 
 do the same ; and it is well known that rooks 
 frequently do great injury to wheat fields by peck- 
 ing off the spears soon after they come out of the 
 ground. These and other birds do the same, to 
 a certain extent, in all wheat fields, and in fields 
 of other grain. But, generally speaking, they 
 here do little injury, because there is always such 
 a superabundance of plants. It is not thus in a 
 corn field where there is not a plant too many ; 
 and, therefore, the birds must be kept off, and 
 effectually kept off, until the plants be three or 
 four inches high, and have lost a part of that 
 sweetness which is contained in the young spear, 
 proceeding, as this latter does, immediately from 
 the seed. 
 
 84. Rooks, partridges, pheasants, crows, mag- 
 pies, jays, blackbirds, thrushes, larks, and several 
 other birds, but particularly the numerous and 
 impudent sparrows, not forgetting the pigeons, 
 and their first cousins, the innocent doves, which 
 last are the most mischievous and most cunningof 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 all, seem equally fond of the spear of the corn ; 
 a thing which I was wholly unaware of, until 
 they had done me great mischief, which it was 
 by no means in my power to repair. An inno- 
 cent dove will come peeping round the field ; 
 and after having settled, in the most modest 
 manner, amongst the thickest branches of a tree 
 or a bush, as if to disguise from the admiring 
 farmer her spangled dress and the white ruff 
 round her neck and her pretty blue and love- in- 
 spiring eyes, will, the moment his back is turned, 
 slip down upon the ground, get upon a row of 
 corn, and trip along like a Circassian, from spear 
 to spear, till she has got twenty or thirty in her 
 craw. These are done for ; for, though they will 
 shoot up again, they will be feeble, backv/ard, and, 
 in short, the crop is almost wholly destroyed ; 
 for the lady-dove does not devour the top of tlie 
 spear, but, regulated by the maxim, that the 
 nearer the bone the sweeter the meat, she plucks 
 it off as nearly to the ground as possii3le, or a 
 little way into the ground, swallows the bottom, 
 and rejects the top. The mortification which 
 these wretched creatures gave me last spring 
 made me a hundred times think of the Scripture, 
 and say, that, if I must have one of the two, give 
 me the cunning serpent in preference to the 
 harmless dove ; for any thing so mischievous as 
 these, of the feathered race, I know nothing of. 
 E 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 85. The rook always keeps above board, and 
 his colour causes him to be seen from afar. 
 Rooks move in battalions, too ; but these melan- 
 choly doves are like private stealers, that depend 
 upon their powers of deception. They are as 
 silent, as nimble, and as demure, as she pick- 
 pockets. All the others make some noise or 
 other, but the doves make none ; and there is 
 no way of matching them, but being continually, 
 during the hours of day-light, in the field with a 
 gun. Larks are very bad ; for the fields are 
 their roosting place ; but a gun fired off now and 
 then in the field, and in various ])arts of it, will 
 keep the whole of tlie feathered race away. I 
 did not discover this until it was too late to pre- 
 vent great mischief; and if I had not discovered 
 it at all, I verily believe I should have lost nine- 
 tenths of the crop. \Mien I did discover it, I 
 had a man constantly in the field v.-ith a gun, 
 firing off ])owder now and then, and the depreda- 
 tions instantly ceased. But, observe, the gun 
 must be heard in the field, not only as soon as 
 it is light, but a little while before it is light, or 
 the guardianship is totally useless ; for birds go 
 to bed before it is dark, and they move from 
 their roost at the very first glimmering of light. 
 ITiis, however, is no very great thing to do, see- 
 ing that the danger lasts for only about a fort- 
 night, for by that time the plants become no 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 delicacy to the birds. Most farmers have a son 
 who would rather be shooting a gun off all the 
 dav, than be at plough or harrow; and, even if 
 it be necessary to hire a man for the purpose, 
 the cost is not very great. 
 
 86. But these day-light enemies of the corn 
 are much less difficult to deal with than those 
 which come by night. Mice do not eat the 
 spears of the corn, and it is very rarely they can 
 find out the seed until it be got into a state that 
 unfits it for their liking. But the slugs are night 
 enemies ; and if they abound, they will do a 
 great deal of mischief, not only near the hedges, 
 but in the middle of the fields, if the ground be 
 rough, and have not recently been thoroughly 
 broken ; and especially if it have been weedy 
 during the preceding summer. These are terri- 
 ble enemies, and it is necessary to provide against 
 them by the previous tillage of the land; but 
 you cannot get them out of the hedges and the 
 hedge- rows, Vvhence they will sally forth in moist 
 or wet weather, and in nights when the dews are 
 heavy. They will sometimes destroy, in great 
 part, a field of wheat. I once saw a field suffer- 
 ing under their attacks in Berkshire. The farmer 
 had laid cabbage leaves about the field as traps 
 for them. The slugs would, soon after day-light, 
 crawl under the leaves ; and then the leaves were 
 taken up, and the slugs killed. This remedy 
 e2 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 could, however, be but very partial. Only a few 
 of the slugs would go under the leaves, and the 
 rest would proceed with their work of destruc- 
 tion. The only eflfectual remedy for slugs is hot 
 lime. The lime should be very fine. Put some 
 into a bag, much larger than necessary to hold 
 the quantity. Put, for instance, a gallon into a 
 bag that v.ill hold four gallons ; and let the bag 
 be of the same stuff that common sacks are made 
 of. Go round the field, and, at a yard distance 
 from wliere the grass of tiie hedge begins, and, as 
 you walk along, give, at every third step, the 
 bag a shake or two. You may keep walking 
 on at a good pace. The ground will all receive 
 some of the fine dust of the lime ; of course the 
 slugs will have their share, and the smallest 
 touch of it will kill any slug. But if none should 
 happen to fall on him, he will lick some up at his 
 next move; and that is equally destructive to him. 
 87. But, observe, this must be done after 
 dark and before day -light ; or, just after a rain : 
 for then the slugs will sally out in the day-time. 
 And, observe, too, that this must be repeated 
 several times ; for slugs do not all come forth in 
 the same night. Observe, further, that the lime 
 loses its power, after it has had rainfall upon it, 
 or after a heavy dew. So that vou ought to 
 count on its power for only once ; and, therefore, 
 it will be necessary to go round the outsides of 
 
VI.] CULTIV^\TION. 
 
 the field about ten nights running, just after the 
 corn begins to appear above ground. 
 
 88. If slugs infest the middle of the field, to 
 kill them will require a little more trouble ; but 
 it is easily done. Go along each row of corn, 
 and shake the bag over the row at every third 
 step, or thereabouts. As it would be difficult to 
 do this in the dark, it may suffice to do it a little 
 before sun-set ; or, very early in the morning. 
 This remedy is effectual, and is neither trouble- 
 some nor costly ; and slugs, if abundant, and if 
 let alone, make great havoc, and in quick time; 
 witness the transplanted lettuce-beds of careless 
 gardeners. It is useless to fling coarse lime 
 about. The lime must be very fine, fine as the 
 finest flour. It then touches all the ground ; 
 and is certain destruction to slugs, and to snails 
 also, if it light on them when they are out of 
 their shells. 
 
 89. But there are other niyht-foes far more 
 destructive than slugs ; and these are, in most 
 cases, jjrotected by the laiu : I mean liares and 
 rabbits! Yet, if you have these to any extent, 
 and dare not kill them, you must not think of 
 planting corn. One hare v.ill nip off a whole row, 
 in one night, forty or fifty rods long. In many 
 parts these animals do great injury to all the 
 straw-crops ; what, then, must they do to corn I 
 If there be but fevj of them, ^ on mav, by good 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 fences, stopping of muses (holes in hedges that 
 they pass through), bushing the gates well, beat- 
 ing the hedges and hedge-rows round the field, and 
 round the neighbouring fields, by day, and, in addi- 
 tion, hunting the field with a spaniel, or poacher's 
 dog, in the night, keep these worst of enemies 
 oif ; but if you have the misfortune to be cursed 
 with them in great numbers, and dm'e not de- 
 stroy or annoy them, you cannot have my 
 Corn, and the owner of the land must be content 
 with such rent as a tenant thus deprived will be 
 able to pay him. Pheasants and partidges may 
 be easily kept off until the corn be out of dan- 
 ger; for they do not work by night, and they 
 smell powder as far as a rook or a magpie ; but 
 the four-legged plagues come by night; and 
 though the report of a gun might alarm them, 
 even in the night, if near to them, they are far 
 too cunning not to know that sportsmen cannot 
 see far in the dark. The law, therefore, which 
 forbids, in certain cases, the killing of these ani- 
 mals, will, whenever thcA' abound, forbid, in fact, 
 the growing of corn. 
 
 90. The corn having been protected against 
 birds and slugs, until it be about three inches 
 high, is quite safe from them for the remainder 
 of its career. Not so, however, from hares and 
 rabbits : they will continue to feed on it until it 
 be a foot high. But, leaving them aside, as an 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION'. 
 
 insuperable ob.stacle to the cultivation, let us now 
 suppose the corn plants to be three inches high. 
 Long before this, 7reeds\\\\\ begin to appear ; for 
 they were in the ground long before the corn, and 
 they claim their right of primogeniture, and act 
 upon that right. They will not rise to the same 
 height with the corn plants ; but, their inferiority in 
 point of height and bulk will be amply made up 
 for in numbers ; and the poor corn plant, if left 
 to itself, will soon be like Gulliver, when bound 
 down by the Lilliputians. These " patriots of 
 the soil," as poor Perry used to call the whig 
 nobilitv, put forward tlie same clain:i in wheat and 
 barley and oat fields ; but these have numbers 
 too ; so that the contest is more equal ; yet, even 
 here, the " patriots of the soil " never struggle 
 wholly in vain ; and, sometimes, they nearly, if 
 not quite, overcome the upstart " Lower Orders.'* 
 
 91. In the case of corn, these patriots must, 
 however, be put down, and that, too, from their 
 
 first appearance; or, at least, as soon as the corn 
 plants are three inches high ; for, the roots of 
 the weeds, small as they may be, do mischief to 
 the corn the moment the weeds show their heads, 
 and even before ; seeing that the root goes down 
 before the head rises above ground. Besides this, 
 the mere act of moving the earth just round the 
 young plant does a great deal of good. 
 
 92. Therefore, as soon as the plants are of the 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 height just mentioned, you take a small hoe, with 
 i<harp corners, and hoe all the ground on both 
 sides of the row of plants, to the distance of six 
 or eight inches, and at a time when the ground 
 is not ivet. Take care to move all the ground 
 between the plants, and close i(p to their stems. 
 If the corn be in hills, let your hoe go to about 
 a foot from the plants all round, and move the 
 earth, with the corner of the hoe, between the 
 plants; so that all the young weeds be de- 
 stroyed. If there be two rows on the land, the 
 two feet between them must be all hoed. No 
 one, who has not actually seen the effect of this 
 work, can form an idea of its efficacy. Great is 
 its effect upon all young plants ; but, in no other 
 case, as far as I have observed, nearly so great as 
 in that of Corn, which testifies to your sight 
 its joy and gratitude in even a few hours after 
 the benefit has been received. If you were to 
 do this work to a field, generally, and to leave 
 one row unhoed, you would, at any distance that 
 would allow you to distinguish one row from 
 another, be able to tell, at the first look, which 
 was the neglected row. A man that could not, 
 or would not, go over two acres a day at this 
 hoeing, would be unfit to go into a field. 
 
 93. After this hoeing, which, if you plant in 
 mid-April, will take place early in May, the 
 plants will soon be from six to eight inches high; 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 and, the weeds, as if resolved to make up for 
 the loss of their slaughtered brethren, will push 
 on, in crowds innumerable, over all the rest of 
 the ground. Now, therefore, the phnKjli must 
 begin to move j not onlv for the destruction of 
 the weeds, but for the furnishing of fresh food 
 for the plants. The interval is five feet wide ; 
 the plough begins in the middle of it, and turns 
 three furrows on each side towards the middle 
 of the interval, and going, when ploughing the 
 two last furrows, within two or three inches of 
 the stems of the plants, and going a good depth, 
 throughout the whole of the work ; not, at any 
 rate, less than six or seven inches. When you have 
 ploughed one interval, go, not to the next, but 
 to the next but one ; and thus go on over the 
 field, leaving every second interval vnploutjhed. 
 All these ploughings of the intervals ought to 
 be performed when the ground is dnj on the 
 top. 
 
 94. At the end of four days (I am speaking 
 of corn in single roivsj, plough these same inter- 
 vals back towards the plants ; and, at the end of 
 another four days, plough, from the rows, the in- 
 tervals that were left unploughed before. The 
 reason for this is, that, in the ploughing, some of 
 the roots of the plants will be, and ought to be, 
 broken or cut off 3 and, it is not right to do this 
 E 5 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 on both sides of the plant at the same time. Four 
 days are enough to allow for the killing of the 
 weeds in the first instance ; and, in the second 
 instance, four days are enough to allow for the 
 plants making new roots in the newly-ploughed 
 ground. At the end of another four days, plough 
 back the second set of intervals ; and thus all the 
 ground has been con^pletely ploughed twice, and 
 the weeds arc all destroyed. 
 
 95 . In the case of the double row, this precaution 
 of leaving every other interval unploughed need 
 not be taken ; for, there is the two feet width of 
 ground between the two rows. Into this ground 
 the roots strike ; indeed they go all through it, 
 crossing each other in their progress ; and there- 
 fore these roots sustain the plant while it is de- 
 prived of tlie food in the earth on the other side 
 of it. I have before observed, that there would be 
 a greater number of plants by having the double 
 row instead of the single row ; but, in this case 
 there would be the two feet space to keep clean, 
 and to move pretty deeply with the Iiand hoe ; 
 and, therefore, I prefer the single row, not on this 
 account only, but because I really think the crop 
 w^ould be nearly as large with the single row as 
 with the double one ; and with single rows the 
 whole of the land, except the narrow space upon 
 which the plants actually stood, would have the 
 
V].] CULTIVATIOiS'. 
 
 benefit of these summer plougbings ; and because 
 the air (of which the corn is a g! eat lover) would 
 come at every plant more freely, 
 
 96. After suffering the ground to lie for about 
 four days, it might, in this double-row system, be 
 all ploughed back again. In this ploughing back, 
 care ought to be taken to lay the earth as close 
 up to the plants as possible. It ought to be a swing 
 plough for this purpose, or, at least, a single- 
 wheeled plough ; for, you could not go close 
 enough with a double- wheeled plough, without 
 crushing the plants. This a matter of great con- 
 sequence ; because the plants will now be of a con- 
 siderable height ; and, if once crushed, they will 
 not rise again. The horses, or, which is better, 
 the oxen, should move slowly and steadily; not 
 be whipped, so as to make them hurry and strain 
 themselves, and be thereby induced to spread tlieir 
 feet widely in their maich near the corn. In all 
 the beautiful scenes of agriculture nothing is so 
 beautiful as this operation, if it be performed with 
 proper implements, a proper degree of strength, 
 and with due care. 
 
 97. If the corn be planted in hills, as above 
 described, you may go, at your first ploughing, as 
 close to the outsides of the hills as to the sides 
 of the rows in the other case ; and you may 
 begin at one end of the field in the five-feet inter- 
 vals, and keep on, without leaving alternate in- 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 teiTals unploughed, as in the case of the single 
 rows ; because here there is a space between liill 
 and hill, into which the roots of the corn will 
 strike from the hills ; these roots will sustain the 
 plants, until the ground have laid long enough 
 to smother the weeds, and to allow of its being 
 ploughed back again. In this case of hills, there 
 \\-ill ])c more than a foot wide of earth that will 
 not be moved by the plough at the first ploughing, 
 and, therefore, this foot wide must, about the 
 same time that the first ploughing is performed, 
 be kept clean by the hoe. 
 
 OS. Thus ends the first ploughing, after which 
 you will see the plants ])ush away at a prodigious 
 rate. The effect of this moving of the earth 
 deeply between standing crops can be known to 
 very few, except Market Gardeners 3 except those 
 who have seen the effect, or those who have 
 carefully read the book of Mr. Tull. The 
 instructions which I am here giving are the result 
 of no conjination of mine : they are the result 
 of observations and experiments without end, 
 arising entirely from my having read that book. 
 Mr. Tull contends that any land which, in its 
 nature, is capable of bearing a tolerable crop of 
 wheat, may be made to produce such crop for 
 any number of years successively, without any 
 manure at all of any sort. And he maintains 
 ]iis opinion upon the ground of having done the 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 thing himself for fourteen years successively; 
 and that, too, upon land of a very inferior 
 description, as every one M'ill testify who has 
 seen the farm, which is situated at a place called 
 Prosperous (probably so called from his great 
 success), in a tract of very indifferent land, lying 
 on the North side of the Hampshire Hills, near 
 the borders of Wiltshire, but being, itself, in 
 the county of Berks. It is, I believe, in the 
 parish of Ink-pen. I visited it in the company 
 of ]\lr. BuDD of Newbury, who had visited it 
 long before with Arthur Young, who, like me, 
 visited it in the character of a Pilgrim, and in 
 honour of the memory of the real founder of 
 every recent improvement that has been made 
 in the agriculture of England. 
 
 99. Wheat, and the rest of our white straw 
 crops, are not so well fitted for the Tullian 
 System \ because they do not stand so erect, 
 and are not so easily cultivated, on account of 
 the necessity there is of having two or more 
 rows, nearly close together in the middle of 
 each land. Besides this, wheat and rye require 
 to stand long upon the ground, whereby the 
 weeds receive greater encouragement and less 
 check. The rows of wheat and rye, if beaten 
 by storms, lop down upon the ploughed ground, 
 and are thereby injured. Yet these disadvan- 
 tages, even with regard to wheat and rye, are 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 greatly over-balanced by the advantage, first, of 
 the absence of the necessity for manure; and 
 second, by the constant good condition in which 
 the land is kept. These repeated ploughings 
 (for I have more to speak of) require labour and 
 expense; but put these against the dung-cart, with 
 all its ])revious and subsequent consequences, and 
 you will soon find that a bright plough share is 
 the cheapest commodity ever used by a farmer. 
 It may be asked, then, why nobody attempts to 
 cultivate the white straw crops in this manner. 
 My answer is, that some people do it, and that, 
 too, upon a large scale. They do it with success; 
 and if we have not numerous imitators, we must 
 ascribe that circumstance to the same cause to 
 wliich we must ascribe the well-known circum- 
 stance, that, until the time of Mr. Tull, the 
 drill husbandry was totally unknown ; and that, 
 until within comparatively a very few years, putting 
 turnips in rows, and ploughing or horse-hoeing 
 between them, was never so much as heard of. 
 Nay, mangle-wurzel was, at its first introduction, 
 sov.ed broad-cast, thougli it would be just as 
 reasonable to cultivate cabl)agcs in the broad- 
 cast fashion. But, then, they tell us, " your 
 intervals are so uide ; you lose so much 
 ground." A gentleman told me, the other day, 
 that Lord King grows ffty tons of mangle- 
 wnrzel upon an acre, uith rows at four feet 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 apart. Another may gro^v as great a crop with 
 rows closer together ; but that other will have his 
 land exhausted by the crop, while the ploughings 
 of Lord King will give him his great crop, leav- 
 ing his land in as good heart as it was before. 
 
 100. If, therefore, this wide tillage be practi- 
 cable and beneficial in the cases here mentioned, 
 what must it be, how obviously must it be, the 
 proper tillage in the case of a tall and bold plant 
 like the Corn? This plant is laid or lodged 
 by no storms j it stands erect under all the rains 
 and winds which they have even in America, 
 though there the plant is double the height of 
 mine ; it bends or leans a little sometimes, but 
 is never beaten dovv^n. We had very heavy 
 storms of rain and wind, last July; thousands 
 and thousands of acres of wheat were laid as 
 flat as a greensward ; but my corn was as erect 
 to the time of its becoming ripe as it was when 
 it was an inch out of the ground. Inter-tillage, 
 therefore, is here perfectly convenient, as well as 
 necessary to the good of the land and to the 
 produce of the crop ; and, if it were not foolish, 
 I should lament that Mr. Tull did not live to 
 see this crop flourishing in English fields. He 
 was taught the benefits of inter-tillage by seeing 
 the plough go between the vine-sets in the vine- 
 yards of France; he saw the beneficial effect 
 which that had upon the plant itself, upon the 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 size of the grapes, upon the quantity of juice, 
 and upon the quaUty of the wine. This fixed 
 the principle in his mind, and he successfully 
 applied it to wheat-fields, tliosc of sainfoin, 
 those of lucerne and of turnips. Never would 
 he have grown any thing but Corn, had he be- 
 come acquainted with the sort of it which would 
 ripen in this country. I have not the smallest 
 doubt in my mind, that good, and even large, 
 crops of corn could be grown, year after year 
 successively, in the same field, for ages, or for 
 ever ; and, if I had a field that were my own, 
 or if I rented a farm with a long lease, I should 
 no more think of putting manure upon the land, 
 than I should think of insuring its fertility by 
 spreading it over with broad sheets, blurred 
 and spoiled by the fabricated speeches of Sheil, 
 or of any of the other of the consumers of the 
 Catholic rent. 
 
 101. We have now seen the first ploughing 
 of the corn land completed. If the ground 
 l)e not very foul, one more ploughing is suffi- 
 cient ; that is to say, one more double ploughing, 
 a ploughing from the plants, and another to turn 
 the earth back. This second double ploughing 
 must be regulated, in point of time, not so much 
 by the time of the year as by the age, the height, 
 and the state of the plants. About the middle 
 of July, or earlier, if you plant early, the plants 
 
VJ.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 will be about a foot and a half, or from that to 
 two feet high. The tassel, or blossom head, 
 which is denoted by «, in the plate repre- 
 senting the plant, will, about the middle of July, 
 begin to make its appearance. At the same 
 time, the ears begin to show themselves forming 
 in the socket of the blades on the sides of the 
 stalk. When you see the tassel begin to rise 
 above the sockets of the upper blades, it is a 
 good time to plough again; for by this time 
 rains have, perhaps, battered the ground, and 
 given time for the weeds to make a fresh start. 
 Now, therefore, the second ploughing is to be 
 given, and to be given precisely in the manner 
 before described in case of tillage in rows. If 
 the tillage be in hills, and you have taken care 
 to have your planting true, you may now plough 
 cross ways, though the width be but four feet 
 in the cross direction. If that be not perfectly 
 true, you cannot do this, and must content 
 yourself with a double ploughing of the five feet 
 interval as before. At this ploughing you must 
 not go quite so close to the plants as you did 
 before ; but if you now leave six inches between 
 the plants and the plough, it will be quite 
 enough, taking care, in case of the single row, 
 to plough by alternate intervals first. Then 
 turn them back, and then plough the others. 
 102. Let no one be afraid of the consequences 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 of thus tearing ahovit tlie roots of the plants 
 when they are at this advanced age and height. It 
 is probable that the ploughing may not be finished 
 before the latter end of July, or the first week 
 of August, but this is no matter; it ought to be 
 done, and well done. Ninety -nine of my readers 
 out of a hundred, and I dare sav, nine hundred 
 and ninety-nine out of a thousand, will shudder 
 at the thought of tearing about in this manner ; 
 thinking that ])rcaking off, tearing off, cutting off, 
 the roots of such large plants, just as they are com- 
 ing into bloom, must be a sort of work of destruc- 
 tion. Let them read the book of Mr. Tull j or 
 let them go and see my friends the Yankees, 
 who generally drive the thing off to the last mo- 
 ment, especially if they be young enough to have 
 a " frolic" stand between them and the plough- 
 ing of the corn ; or if the wife want the horses 
 to go ten or twenty miles to have a gossip with 
 a ne'tfjhhour over a comfortable cup of tea ; but 
 they, to do them justice, do not forget the beef 
 steaks, or the barbecued fowls, on these occa- 
 sions ; that is to say, a fowl caught up in the 
 yard, scalded in a minute, cleaned the next, and 
 splitted down the back, and clapped upon the 
 gridiron (favourite implement of mine), and then 
 upon the table, along with the hot cakes, the 
 ])reserved peaches, and the comfortable cup of 
 tea. If a wife want the horses for this purpose, 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 or for any other, and should continue too long a 
 time in a visiting or frolicking humour, the poor 
 corn gives signs of the consequence, by becom- 
 ing yellow, and sharp pointed at the blade. By- 
 and-bye, however, the Yankee comes with his 
 plough ; and it would frighten an English farmer 
 out of his senses to see how he goes on, swearing 
 at the horses, and tearing about the ground, and 
 tumbling it up against the plants ; but, at any 
 rate, moving it all pretty deeply, somehow or 
 other. 1 have seen them do this when the tassel 
 was nearly at its full height, and when the silk 
 was appearing from the ears. One rule is inva- 
 riable ; that is, that if the corn be not ploughed 
 at all there will be no crop ; there will be tassel, 
 and the semblance of earsj but (upon ordinary 
 land, at least), there will be no crop at all. 
 
 103. If the reader Avill neither go to America 
 nor read the book of Mr. Tull, which latter is 
 quite sufficient for any rational person, he may 
 take a spade; and, I hope that it is not necessary 
 to tell him that this is an iron instrument, about 
 nine inches long and seven inches wide, with a 
 sharp edge at the bottom, and a socket at the top 
 to receive a handle about two feet and a half long, 
 at the top of which there is an eye, for the 
 greater convenience of handling; he may take a 
 spade, and go to two rows of cabbages forming 
 part of a plat of that vegetable, and, holding the 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 spade in a sloping direction, and driving it down 
 with his foot, as far he can drive it, pressing 
 down the eye with one hand and applying the 
 other hand to the handle, lift up all the earth, 
 spit after spit, between these two rows, putting 
 the top of the earth into the place where the 
 bottom was before. Let him (though this is a 
 fine recipe for the gout) now lay by the spade, 
 and take another instrument, called a hoe, which 
 he mav use without inconvenience to his back, 
 and just scrape over the ground, and kill the as- 
 piring weeds over the rest of the plat. Let him 
 look at the whole plat in a week from that time ; 
 and, though these two rows have had but half til- 
 lage, the greatness of their progress, compared 
 with that of the rest, he will find to be surprising. 
 104. In 1817, in Long Island, 1 had nothing 
 but a garden wherein to plant corn, or rather a 
 piece of ground which had once been a garden. 
 ^Iv neighbour ploughed it up for me with his 
 oxen ; and I planted in it five square rods with 
 corn, ^^'ant of room made me put the hills at 
 three feet apart ; but still my corn was very fine. 
 There could be no ploughing of such a little 
 piece, and the second digging was put off until 
 a very late season. The tassel was got up a 
 good lieight, and the silk was just ready to ap- 
 pear. But the weather was so tremendously hot, 
 and our bodies were so much like bits of leather, 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 that the digging was put off, from time to time, 
 in order to get a cool day, until it could be jDut 
 off no longer. There were five of us, and every 
 one seemed to have still less relish for the job 
 than every other. At last the job fell to the lot 
 of me and a young Frenchman, who had come 
 from St. Hklena, and had gone over to Ame- 
 rica in the same ship with us. There were but 
 five rods of ground, but we drove off the job till 
 after breakfast. Finally, at it we went. As it 
 happened, we chose pretty nearly the hottest day 
 in the year. However, 1 was resolved to do my 
 part ; and he, from that feeling of politeness for 
 which his nation is so famed, could not think of 
 going in while Monsieur Cobbe remained broil- 
 ing in the sun. In short, we finished the job ; 
 we dug all the ground deep, and we hilled up the 
 corn besides. I was very far from having what 
 may be called a dry shirt, and neither of us had 
 either stockings or neckcloths of any kind ; but 
 his shirt was the wettest I ever saw upon a! hu- 
 man body; just as wet as if it had been taken out 
 of water, and immediately put upon his back. I 
 thought to myself, and I told one of my sons in 
 the evening, that I had put the Tullian system 
 to a very severe test that day ; for, you will ob- 
 serve, we dug close round all the hills, leaving no 
 part of the ground unmoved, except the little 
 circles on which the plants were actually stand- 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 iiig. Next (lav, about noon, I went to look at 
 the corn, and found tlie blades closing up, as if 
 beginning to wither. I began to be afraid. It 
 got, however, less and less withered every day, 
 till it resumed its full splendour as before ; it 
 completely recovered the drooping in a very short 
 time, and the crop was so much greater than I 
 ever had seen before in my life, in proportion to 
 the size of the piece, that a very good neighbour 
 of mine several times expressed his regret that it 
 was not suffered to ripen, that we might have 
 taken an account of its produce ; but I wanted 
 the corn to eat green, in the manner to be de- 
 scribed by-and-bye, and, therefore, it was not 
 preserved until it was ripe. 
 
 105. I give this as an instance of what plants 
 will bear in the way of inter-cultivation. We 
 tore to pieces, or cut off, all the lateral roots of 
 these corn plants. But the remaining parts of 
 these roots, for the reasons mentioned by Mr. 
 TuLL, became greater feeders than the whole of 
 the roots had been before. If you cut off a root 
 of any herbaceous plant in the summer time, 
 it is like cutting off the shoot of a tree ; several 
 roots come out immediately, instead of the one 
 there was before : these bring fresh supplies of 
 food, and the plant flourishes and produces ac- 
 cordinglv. Yet I do not recommend such ad- 
 venturous work to be performed in an English 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 corn field. Having gone as closely to the roots 
 as possible, at the first ploughing, I recommend 
 to keep at six inches from them in ti\e second 
 ploughing ; and this is quite enough. 
 
 106. After this last double ploughing is com- 
 pleted, the earthing up takes place ; which is per- 
 formed by a large hoe, drawing, from the middle 
 of the interval earth sufficient to hill up the 
 stalks of the ])lants to the heighth of six or seven 
 inches above the level of the ground where they 
 stand. But, before you perform this earthing up, 
 vou must sucker the plants j and, this is a matter 
 which requires a full explanation. 
 
 107. Each plant will send out from the bot- 
 tom of the stalk, just v/here it meets the ground, 
 one, two, three, four or more suckers. These 
 must be taken off by j)ressing the bottom ends of 
 them cloivmvards, so as to leave to each plant 
 nothing but a single stalk. The suckers, if 
 strong, will bear ears themselves sometimes, 
 and, indeed, generally, if not always, if the plants 
 be strong; but, in the first place, those who have 
 cultivated corn for a century and a half, always 
 take off the suckers. In the next place, the ears 
 which come upon these suckers are almost al- 
 ways very small ; are necessarily more backioard 
 than the ears of the main stalk ; cause the crop 
 to ripen unequally ; and necessarily deduct fiom 
 the size and goodness of the ears upon the main 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 stalk. I did not sucker my corn this year, of 
 which I saw the consequences when I came to 
 gather in and husk the crop. I have had, indeed, 
 a single plant with eleven ears upon it, those of 
 the suckers and all taken together; hut while this, 
 or any thing like it, has been very rare, I am 
 certain, that the ears upon the main stalks would 
 have been much larger and longer if the corn had 
 been suckered. I have one plant which has been 
 preserved entire, which has now six good ears 
 upon it, and the seventh was broken off by some 
 accident; but this plant happened, from some 
 cause or another, to have no suckers at all. I 
 therefore recommend the corn to be suckered ; 
 and the suckers to be taken clean off out of 
 their sockets, as soon as they get to be two, 
 three, or four inches long ; and this is the length 
 they will attain between the first and second 
 ploughings. 
 
 108. The suckers, if the operation be per- 
 formed in due time, will amount to a very little 
 in point of bulk; but, still, they will pay for the 
 labour, for they are excellent food for hogs or 
 cows, though care must be taken not to give the 
 cows too great a quantity of them at first, as 
 they are apt to bloiv cattle until after they have 
 digested the first meal of them, in the same man- 
 ner as are lucerne, young clover and several other 
 things. The suckering should be performed by 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 a trusty person, who has strong fingers, and who 
 is not too deUcate to poke those fingers down 
 into the dirt a little ; for, unless you get the 
 suckers completely out from the socket, they are 
 sure to start again. 
 
 109. ,The earthing up answers two purposes; 
 first, it keeps the plant stiff and steady, in case 
 of very rough winds. Blowing down is out of 
 the question ; but it is desirable that the plant 
 should not even lean. The other pur])ose is (and 
 this is the great purpose), to give the plant a 
 fresh stock of roots', for the corn-plant, like 
 tlie hop-bine, sends out, when earthed up, new 
 roots from the bottom of the part thus covered 
 with the earth. Leave a corn-plant with no- 
 thing but flat hoeing, and without earthing 
 up, and you will see all round it roots coming 
 out, just above the ground, and going inuue- 
 diately down into the ground. But, indeed, why 
 do we earth up kidney beans, peas, broad beans, 
 cabbages and many other garden plants ? Not 
 because the earth tends to keep them upright, or 
 because it looks pretty, but because the parts of 
 the stalks covered by fresh earth send forth roots 
 into that earth ; and if you were to earth up a 
 cabbage-plant, so as to touch the under sides of 
 the bottom leaves, you would find, by the time 
 that the cabbage had fairly leaved, roots coming 
 out all round the stem or stalk from the top to 
 
 F 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 the bottom. This earthing up, therefore, is a 
 work that ought not to be neglected, though I 
 neglected it this year, wholly neglected it, in a 
 great part of the field ; and it was in no part 
 done well, for, the distance was not sufficient for 
 a due performance of the work ; and, though my 
 crop is large, it would have been a great deal 
 larger if all these operations had been performed 
 in due time and manner. 
 
 110. I must here make an observation, which I 
 think 1 have somewhere made before, that, though 
 the Scripture forbids us to muzzle the ox as he 
 treadeth out the corn, Scripture does not forbid us 
 (and the good of ourselves, as well as of the ox, 
 call upon us to do it) to muzzle him when he is 
 ploughing in the corn ; and not only the ox, but 
 the horse. Reining up will not do. There must 
 be a muzzle to prevent the animal from cropping 
 off, in spite of your teeth, the plants between 
 which you are ploughing. You may gag a horse, 
 by putting a short stick in his mouth, of the 
 thickness of a broom-stick, and tying the ends 
 tightly back to some parts of the harness; but 
 this is not so good as an effectual muzzle, which 
 leaves room for the opening of the mouth, and 
 prevents the possibility of biting. When, indeed, 
 the plant has produced its crop, these gentle, 
 docile, and useful, fellow-labourers of man, are 
 fairly entitled to their share, and particularly the 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 gentle, the patient, and the laborious ox, which I 
 do not wonder was pointed out to us as an object 
 of our especial consideration and humanity ; but, 
 in this case, his anticipation of enjoyment woukl 
 be destructive of future and greater benefit, even 
 to himself. It is here, therefore, for the reason 
 of man to interfere, as it is in the case of child- 
 ren, or other thoughtless beings, who destroy 
 things of this sort because they know not their 
 value. I despise the canting of wretches, who 
 affect to weep over what they call the cruelty of 
 drovers and butchers, and who, the next minute, 
 will devour parts of the animals with the blood 
 almost running out of the corners of their 
 mouths : and, which is a great deal worse, will 
 leave, without a sigh, those who toil upon their 
 estates, or in the country from which they draw 
 their means, to perish with hunger and with cold 
 and to suffer degradation and live on food, un- 
 known to the cattle in England. Animals are 
 fatted for the purpose of being killed ; to be 
 eaten they must be taken to the spot where the 
 eaters reside ; and in the taking them thither and 
 the killing of them, it is quite impossible to pre- 
 vent those occurrences in their treatment, of 
 which this sham humanity so ostentatiously com- 
 plains. But, the animals that labour are entitled 
 to great consideration from every one to whose 
 care they have, by circumstances, been commit- 
 f2 
 
SUMMER [Chap, 
 
 ted; and I know of no fault in a labourer, which 
 has so often excited my displeasure, and pro- 
 duced at my hands the sole punishment in my 
 power to inflict, as that of beating, or even using 
 foul language to horses or oxen working in the 
 fields. The second best ploughman I ever had 
 in my life I discharged on a Monday afternoon, 
 giving him the remainder of the week's wages, 
 for nothing, but having accidentally heard him 
 abusing his horses while he was at plough ; and, 
 upon coming into the field, seeing him beating 
 about the head a mare, which we always re- 
 garded as, and wliich was, a most docile and 
 valuable creature, 
 
 111. Before I dismiss this chapter entirely, I 
 mustgivc my opinion relative to the choice between 
 oxen and horses, in this business of corn ; 
 and, indeed, in farm-work generally. I am de- 
 cidedly for the using of oxen, for reasons a bare 
 list of which, each occupyino- one line, would fill 
 a page of this book. In the first place, the 
 harness, if harness be used and not yokes, and I 
 will proceed first upon that supposition, is much 
 less expensive, and requires less strength, than 
 that which is to stand the jerking and the starting 
 of a horse. Second : food upon which a horse 
 will not be able to work at all is cjuite sufficient 
 for an ox ; the latter does not cost for his food a 
 fourth, or even a sixth, and perhaps a tenth, 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 taking the whole year round, part of the sum 
 which the food of a horse costs ; and, of the sort 
 of food for an ox I shall speak by-and-hye. One 
 of the great plagues of horses is the blacksmith, 
 who may almost be looked upon as an inmate of 
 the farm-yard, acting, as he generally does, in the 
 double capacity of horse-shoe-maker and farrier, 
 in the former of which, he, several times in 
 every year, actually makes business for himself 
 in the latter. In short, this may be called an 
 everlasting visitor; and, being a prowler about 
 from place to place, he brings all the news re- 
 gularly, once or twice a week ; and gathers a 
 goodly group about him at the stable door. .Then, 
 just at the time whet^you want the team to go 
 out, a horse has got a shoe loose ; he must be 
 taken to the blacksmith, at perhaps a mile dis- 
 tance; or the blacksmith must be brought; and 
 he, unluckily, is gone to another farm. How 
 often does it happen (and every farmer vvill say 
 it) for a wagon or cart, which ought to be off 
 before day-light, to be kept at home till eight 
 o'clock, waiting for the operations of the black- 
 smith ! How often does it happen for a haivest- 
 wagon, to stand still for hours from the same 
 cause ! With oxen you have none of these 
 plagues, and none of the heavy expenses tliat 
 accompany them. Third : there is the farrier 
 with his hallsj and his drinks, and his salve, and 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 his tow, and all his tinkerings about day after 
 day, week after week, and month after month. 
 There is the grease, and the pole-evil, and the 
 glanders, and the strangles, zwdnha fret, and the 
 couglis, and tlie staggers, and the botts, and va- 
 rious other nasty and troublesome diseases. 
 The ox knows none of these : he sets them all, 
 BoTT Smith's name-sakes and the whole, com- 
 pletely at defiance. If he get lanied by any 
 means, you have only to let him lay in a rough 
 field or a meadow and rest until he be well ; and 
 if the lameness be incurable, still he will fat with 
 very little trouble, and will, nineteen times out of 
 twenty, sell for more than he cost. The farrier's 
 bill is a manuscript of considerable length, wind- 
 ing up with a decent allegation in figures. You 
 will find not a single ball omitted ; and, generally 
 speaking, I say generally speaking, the cost of 
 the farrier is far beyond the good that he does ; 
 and in innumerable cases, you have at last to 
 send the horse to the dog kennel. Fourth : 
 a personage coming still more home to you ', I 
 mean the carter. A carter is the sole master of 
 the horses withAvhich he goes; and, in nine cases 
 out of ten, he is, as far as concerns them and their 
 labours, pretty nearly the master of their owner. 
 He must have his way pretty much as to quantity 
 and quality of food, as to hours of labour, and as 
 to various other things, in which, if you do not 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 give way to him, you must make up your mind to 
 get rid of him; and, even then, you only exchange 
 one sort of half master for another. If you be 
 peremptory in your commands to him, and insist 
 upon such or such a quantity of work being done, 
 in such or such a space of time, and also insist 
 upon having your own way with regard to the food 
 of the horses, he has a way of making their rough 
 coats and bare bones convince you, that he under- 
 stood these matters a great deal better than you. 
 With oxen you have no part of this everlasting 
 plague. They want neither currying, nor rub- 
 bing; they want no straw cut up for chaff, they 
 want no stables to be cleaned out, once or twice 
 a day; they want no careful racking up by 
 candle-light ; they want no man in the stable, 
 two hours before it is time to turn out to work : 
 turned into the field or the meadow, or turned 
 to the cribs in their yard, they are ready at day- 
 light to receive the collar or the yoke, and they 
 are at work without any previous ceremony. 
 The carter gets drunk, or quits you, which he 
 legally may, in the middle of harvest, though he 
 has been living upon you all the winter ; he may 
 do this legally if he be fired with the love of fame 
 to be acquired in his Majestifs sen-ice. With 
 oxen you set both the carter, and this most in- 
 jurious law at defiance. Any thing that has 
 two hands can put oxen in harness, and can hold 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 a plough, or drive a cart or a wagon, with crea- 
 tures so gentle. You have no growling fellow to 
 share in the mastership of the concern with your- 
 self; and vou expose none of these to act un- 
 justly and ungratefully. Fifth : food which the 
 ox re([uires is, any tolerably good meadow or 
 grass-field in summer, or, which is better, clover, 
 lucerne, or even meadow grass cut up and lirought 
 in by himself, to be eaten out of a crib in the 
 yard ; because here the manure remains ; and 
 because, especially in the busy time of the year, 
 the ox gets his laeat quietly, and lies down and 
 rests. Here is no cutting up of chaff, no going 
 to the granary for oats or beans ; or, for what 
 is a great deal better, corn : no bi7is are wanted, 
 and there is no sharing between the working 
 cattle and the rats and the mice, both of whom, 
 invariably, partake of the meal administered in 
 the manger. In winter time, when there is no 
 grass, coarse hay is sufficient for the ox, corn- 
 tops, or even stalks, which latter may serve in the 
 fall of the year, unless the oxen work hard. In 
 times of leisure the ox is getting flesh, notwith- 
 standing the cheapness of his food. Wliite tur- 
 nips, tops and all ; mangle wurzel, and its tops 3 
 and, towards the spring of the year, when the 
 work is required to be hard, and before the 
 grass has arrived, or even the clover or the 
 Jucerne, Swedish turnips, is the proper food for 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 an ox. He would fatten on them if he did no 
 work ; but he will work on them constantly, 
 without losing flesh. You know how manv 
 oxen you have ; and you know that each will 
 require about two bushels a day, just topped and 
 tossed into a crib ; and therefore you know how 
 much of your Swedishy turnip crop you ought to 
 reserve for this purpose. The grass, and even 
 the lucerne, does not come into use, generally 
 speaking, until the middle of May. You ought, 
 therefore, according to the good English fashion of 
 providing rather too much than too little, make a 
 provision of Swedish turnips, so as to begin 
 feeding upon them on the 1st of March, and 
 ending the last week of May. Your oxen, fed 
 upon these, will trip along as quickly as almost 
 any horses, and will keep up their flesh during 
 the whole of the sowing season ; and, if circum- 
 stances should render it advisable, will be fat for 
 the butcher, by the next Christmas. Sixth : the 
 first cost of an ox or steer, three years old, 
 would at this time, if of the North Devon or 
 Sussex breed, be, perhaps, if in good condition, 
 and ready broken in to his work, from four- 
 teen to seventeen pounds. You cannot have a 
 horse of the same age under double the sum, if 
 in good condition, and fit to do the work that an 
 ox will perform. Every day of his life, until he 
 be seven years old, the ox gets better and better ; 
 F 5 
 
SUMMER [Chap 
 
 and, every day of his Hfe the horse gets worse and 
 worse, comes nearer and nearer to the day when 
 his body, skin and all, must be sold for twenty or 
 thirty shillings ; and, during the four years which 
 I have here supposed an ox might be advan- 
 tageously kept at work, the horse will have cost, 
 on an average, an additional five pounds at the 
 least, for the blacksmith and the fanier, to 
 say nothing here about the great difference in 
 the four years' costs of food. At last, if from 
 the age of the ox, or from any other circumstance, 
 it be desirable to fat him, he may bring you one- 
 third more than his first cost, if not double the 
 amount of it. In the case of selling off the 
 stock of a farm, horses are a mere drug, if they 
 be old or out of condition ; but an ox will, either 
 for working or fatting, always sell for his worth. 
 He is something to be eaten, and has an intrinsic 
 value, not at all depending upon adventitious 
 circumstances, or upon taste or opinion. There is 
 no question as to his soundness, no ^^loarranty;" 
 no roguish jockey here to come into play. There 
 is one thing indeed, which the mention of the 
 ** warranty," here reminds me of; and that is, the 
 dreadful falling off, which the general use of 
 oxen would occasion in the practice of the Courts 
 of Law. Our ears are constantly filled with the 
 accounts of fiorsc-causes ; but, whoever heard of 
 an ox-cause? The ox is the natural assistant of 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 man in the labours of the field. So he was in 
 the days of Moses, and throughout the whole 
 of the periods of the transactions of which the 
 Bible is a history. We read in the Bible of war- 
 horses ; of horses drawing chariots ; but we 
 never find an allusion to horses employed in the 
 tillage of the land ; for which, by their gentle- 
 ness, by the nature of the food which they require, 
 by their great docility, oxen seem to have been 
 formed by nature. When I was in Long Island, 
 I had a pair of large oxen and a pair of small 
 ones ; and, from that time I have been astonished 
 at their not being more in use in England. If 
 you want to do a very long day's work in summer 
 time, it is necessary to rest in the middle of the 
 day, and particularly if the weather be hot. 
 What a clutter there is with horses in this case. 
 They must be brought into the stable, rubbed 
 down, fed at manger, and taken out again to the 
 field, be the distance what it may ; an ox is un- 
 collared or unyoked, turned into the nearest field 
 which has no crop in it ; and, perhaps you may 
 let him loose in the field where you are at 
 plough, and he there, either on the unploughed 
 ground, or round the hedges, gets him a luncheon, 
 and is ready for you when you come back. The 
 docility of oxen is beyond belief to those who 
 have not been in the habit of using them. My 
 man in Long Island, used, in summer time. 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 to go out with his yoke and his hows just at 
 l)reak of clay ; that is to say, as soon as he could 
 see the oxen at fifty or sixty yards from him ; 
 for, there it is a great thing to get the main of the 
 work done before ten o'clock, and after five, in 
 order to avoid the burning heat of the day. He 
 generally found the oxen lying down, in which 
 respect again they were so much better than the 
 dainty and capricious horse, which will some- 
 times stand upon his legs, even for a week 
 together. As soon as the man go^ a. sight of 
 the oxen, for the space was large, he used to 
 call out " Haiv, boys." At the second call, some- 
 ivhat more loud than the former, the oxen used 
 to rise up and look at him, and then look 
 at one another. When he approached them 
 near enough for his words to be distinctly heard, 
 lie used to call out, " Come under " upon which 
 the oxen began to walk oflF slowly towards 
 him. The next words were, " Come under^ I 
 TELL ye," pronounced in a very command- 
 ing and even angry tone, upon which the oxen 
 set off to him at full trot, bringing their heads 
 up close to his body ; and putting the yokes 
 round their necks, each fastened at the top 
 with a little piece of wood, away he walked, and 
 they after him, into the field, where a single 
 plough-chain hooked on to a ring in the yoke, 
 sent the plough along in a minute. There are 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 two objections stated to the use of oxen. It is 
 said that they ^o sloivly ; and so they ought 5 and, 
 on the finest arable farms that I ever saw, and I 
 believe are the finest in the world, I mean, in the 
 vales of Wiltshire, the horses go as slowly as 
 foot can fall. It is the history of the tortoise 
 and the hare ; the movements must be slow in 
 such a case 3 and, if the time be well husbanded, 
 slow movements are the best. The other objec- 
 tion is, that their feet, unless they be shod, 
 (which they never should be, by me) disqualify 
 them from travelling upon hard roads. I am 
 not recommending them as fit for road wagons, 
 or vans or stage coaches. I am recommending 
 them for work upon a farm, which includes 
 going to the mill, going to coppice cart, going 
 to timber cart j as far as the outsides of the 
 farm ; all which work I have seen them perform 
 in the most excellent manner, at Farmer 
 Brazier's, at Worth, in Sussex, who always 
 has a team of four oxen, who has a pair of young 
 ones always coming on, and who now and then 
 fats a pair of the oldest, or sells them for the 
 purpose of their being fatted. A few miles upon 
 even a hard turnpike road does the feet of an 
 ox no harm ; or else, how do those which are 
 loaded with fat walk, sometimes a hundred and 
 fifty miles, for the purpose of being devoured by 
 the tax-eaters of London. These oxen are 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 sometimes lame ; but you will see whole droves 
 of fat Dev'onshire oxen, without a lean one 
 amongst them. An ox will go in a cart or 
 wagon, just as well as a horse, and with more 
 docilitv. The exceeding troublesomeness of rely- 
 ing solely upon the spade, and the necessity of 
 my being constantly present here; besides the 
 absolute necessity of a good deal of carting; 
 made me, sometime ago in conversation with a 
 friend, express my deep regret at not being able 
 to bring over a yankee with a pair of oxen, his 
 yoke, and his bows. As it happened this friend 
 had been in America himself, and was now using 
 oxen in England, and kindly offered to send 
 me two pair, ready broken to their work. T 
 have them, and very docile and excellent oxen 
 they are. I was afraid of being compelled to 
 resort to the horse, the " head " carter, the 
 well-informed blacksmith, and the scientific 
 farrier. I trembled at the very thought, 
 and was happily relieved from my distress by 
 the intervention of this brother emigrant to 
 America. For heavy or deep ploughing we 
 take the two pair. For light ploughing, such as 
 the inter-tillage above mentioned, one pair will 
 be enough. These oxen cart the dung, bring in 
 the corn, the mangle-wurzel roots and leaves, 
 and, in short, do all the work upon the farm. I 
 have one little horse to send into town and for 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 Other purposes ; but an ox does very well to draw 
 a cart to Kensington, or to go any short dis- 
 tance, and, if not very frequently, over the pave- 
 ment as far as Hyde Park Corner, or even far- 
 ther. About farms, however, there are, thank 
 God, no pavements yet; and, therefore, it does ap- 
 pear to me to be the strangest thing in the world, 
 that the use of oxen is not preferred to that of 
 horses. The reason is, I believe, that farmers 
 generally think that horses do more work than 
 oxen ; and another reason certainly is, that they 
 Avill bear hurrying and whipping along, which 
 oxen will not. An additional reason is, that horses 
 can be sent with a load upon any hard roads, 
 and that, generally speaking, oxen cannot ; ])ut, 
 I want to know what great distances a farmer 
 can want to send his team to. To market is the 
 utmost. The market is not, on an average, ten 
 miles distant from the farm ; and that distance 
 is not necessary to be gone over a great many 
 times in the year, except the farm be very large, 
 and then there must be several teams of oxen, 
 amongst which this road work would of course 
 be divided. In these objections, I therefore see 
 nothing of any weight; and there remains onlv 
 to speak of the hreaking-in. In the first place, 
 oxen are certainly more troublesome than cart 
 horses to break into their work; but, with an in- 
 flexible resolution on the part of the master to 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 see patience exercised, and all violence and 
 rough and loud language avoided, and with at- 
 tention to it himself, the breaking-in of a young 
 ox is a matter of very little difficulty. In the first 
 place, he should be kept for some time in com- 
 pany with the working oxen when they are not 
 at work j he should feed them in the same pas- 
 ture, or out of the same cribs in the yard. Then 
 he should be tied up in a stall, for a month or 
 so, every night by the side of one of the working 
 oxen, and always the same ox, and on the same 
 side of him. Then the collar (if collars be used) 
 should be put on him, and he might wear it con- 
 stantly. By-and-bye the rest of the harness. 
 Then, he should be led out with the harness on, 
 walking still on the same side of the same work- 
 ing ox. If yokes be used, he should be led yoked 
 with the other ox without any thing to draw. 
 The plough is the great doctor for horses as well 
 as for oxen ; for here there is no room, and no 
 danger of injury to any thing. When first put 
 to plough, the ground should be rather light, and 
 the young ox should hardly feel that he has any 
 thing behind him. If, however, he be stubborn, 
 there should be no blows, and no loud scolding. 
 Stop, pat him, and pat the other ox, and he will 
 presently move on again and pull a little. If he 
 lie down, which he sometimes will, let him lie 
 till he be tired, and when he chooses to get up 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 treat him very gently, as if he had heen doing 
 every thing that was right. By these means a 
 young ox is broken to his labour in the course of 
 a few days ; and when that is once done, it is 
 done for all the working part of his life. Rich 
 pasture will not make him restive, as high feeding 
 does a horse. With gentle treatment he is al- 
 ways of the same temper, is always of the same 
 aptitude to labour : he is stronger with good feed 
 than with bad 3 but no feed makes him unwilling 
 to perform what you want him to perform. In 
 conclusion, there is a question which is best, 
 collars or yokes ? in some respects one is, and in 
 some respects the other; especially if you want 
 an ox to go in shafts, to which the yoke cannot 
 be easily applied. The collar, however, is not 
 the natural thing for the ox, whose seats of 
 strength are his neck and his horns, and not his 
 shoulders. In America yokes are universal, and 
 yokes prevail in Sussex. They are the least 
 expensive, but if yokes be used with carts or 
 wagons, there must be poles and not shafts ; for 
 the yoke is for two oxen and not for one. Mr. 
 TuLL used a bull with a single yoke, a description 
 of which is given in my " Years Residence in 
 America," one of which I had there, and used it as 
 long as I remained there; and such a yoke might 
 be useful to some persons who persist in the nar- 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 row tillage. In the case of corn, it would be of 
 no use at all. 
 
 112. There is one thing yet to be observed on, 
 with regard to the ploughing ; and this is a mat- 
 ter that gentlemen must attend to with great 
 scrupulousness, and with great resolution. Farm- 
 ers will have the thing done without any cere- 
 mony; but, gentlemen must resolve to have it 
 done. I have spoken of the ploughings between 
 the corn as being to be performed by two oxen 
 Or horses. In very light ground it may be done 
 with one, with a pair of reins, with a swing 
 plough well made and light; but generally it 
 will be done by two, for, the deeper the plough- 
 ing is the better. 
 
 1 13. Unless the plough be so drawn, or so 
 geared as they call it : that is to say, unless the 
 things by which it is drawn be what they ought 
 to be, the corn-plants will, at the second plough- 
 ing, be knocked down, or at least very much 
 broken or bruised by the things which are made 
 use of for attaching the horses or oxen to the 
 plough. In the first place, the head-piece of the 
 plough, which is a piece of iron, with knotches 
 in it, to which are fastened the hooks the cattle 
 draw by ; this head-piece is about nine inches 
 wide, and has several divisions in it for the pur- 
 pose of shifting the hook. After this (towards 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 the cattle) comes a piece of wood with one hook 
 at each end of it, and with one in the middle: 
 the middle hook is to fasten it to the head-piece, 
 and the two hooks at the ends are to receive a 
 hook from the middle of two other pieces of 
 wood, which two pieces of wood are made in the 
 same manner as the first piece, and have a hook 
 at each end to receive the hook that is at the end 
 of each of the traces of the cattle. These two last 
 pieces of wood are called by all manner of names ; 
 by a name which differs in almost every county in 
 the kingdom. In Hampshire they are called 
 wMjyple-trees, that is to say in the north, for this 
 name does not hold good in the south 3 in Surrey 
 they are called whipponses ; in Long Island 
 they are called whiffle-trees ', in Norfolk and 
 Suffolk, by names that I cannot recollect. 
 
 1 1 4. These mechanical descriptions are very 
 difficult work, unless you resort to the graving 
 tool, which I do not think necessary in a case 
 like this, and yet I must show how the bruising 
 and beating the corn-plants about by this tackle 
 may be avoided. Let us resume then ; first 
 comes the head-piece of the plough, to that is 
 hooked the first mentioned piece of wood, which 
 is called the bolt ; to this are hooked the two 
 pieces of wood, which are called the whip- 
 ponses ; these are hooked to the two ends of the 
 bolt 3 and then to the two ends of each of these 
 
SUMMER [Chap. 
 
 are hoolied the two tuaces, which are fastened 
 to the collar of each of the cattle. Now, 
 observe, all this tackle can be used without the 
 smallest inconvenience at the first ploi/ghing o{ t\\e 
 corn ; because one of the oxen or horses walks in 
 the furrow, and the end of his whipjwns will ride 
 so high as not to touch the corn plants at all. 
 But, at the next ploughing, the corn will be pro- 
 bably two feet high or more, and the ends of the 
 whippons would bruise or break them. You 
 must, therefore, now, not plough with the cattle 
 abreast, but singly ; that is to say, they must 
 follow one another at their work ; and, as the 
 ground has been so recently twice ploughed, it 
 will move without any great strength, and the 
 work may be done by one ox, or one horse ; but 
 it is done best by two, for, the deeper the plough- 
 ing is, the better it is. 
 
 115. Supposing the ox (for I will use this 
 word alone now, it being understood, that the 
 same directions apply to the horse) to have his 
 traces hooked on to the bolt, still one end of the 
 bolt would knock the corn about. Yet, the 
 traces must be kept pretty widely apart ; or else, 
 they gall the sides and thighs of the ox. A 
 short BOLT, therefore ; one about fifteen inches 
 long instead of three feet, is the thing ; to this 
 BOLT the two traces may be fastened; but, as 
 they would still gall the sides of the ox, and both 
 
VI.] CULTIVATION. 
 
 sides and thighs of the horse, there must be a 
 SPREADER at a proper distance from the hinder 
 part of the animal, long enough to keep the 
 traces sufficiently clear of his body; yet, as it 
 is desirable to have this spreader as short as pos- 
 sible, the traces, in the parts opposite the sides 
 and thighs may be sewed round, with some 
 coarse sacking, or something of that sort, to pre- 
 vent the galling. 
 
 116. With these precautions, the work will be 
 done without the smallest risk of bruising the 
 corn-plants. It is what I have done, constantly, 
 in ploughing between Swedish turnips and 
 mangle-wurzel. It is what any body may do 
 without any difficulty. Farmers will make their 
 people do it at once without any ceremony; they 
 will tell them what to do, and ask nothing about 
 the state of their opinions about the matter; and 
 if gentlemen have a mind to have the thing done, 
 they must do the same. If there be two oxen, 
 the one following the other, there must be a 
 driver, or else the leading ox may be apt to be 
 stretching his neck to get at the corn ; and it is 
 the same with horses, of course. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Ow tJie toppiny of the Corn, and on the Mode 
 of stacking the Tojis. 
 
 117. The plate on the opposite page (Plate II) 
 represents a Corn Plant which is topped. By 
 referring back to Plate I, you will perceive that the 
 top is taken ofiF, with the tassel upon it, and with 
 some of the leaves or blades attached to it. In 
 Plate II, a represents the point at which the 
 Toi' is cut off 3 b, b, b, the three ears covered 
 with their husks; d,d,d, are little bunches of 
 the dead silk that remain after the rest of the silk 
 has been dried away ; c, c, the stalk. There 
 are, generally, some leaves shorter or longer that 
 come out of the ears ; that is to say, that grow 
 out of the point of the husks : these are not 
 always taken off quite clean ; but, if the thing 
 were done, in a manner perfectly well, the plant, 
 when topj)ed and bladed, would be as it stands in 
 Plate II. 
 
 IIS. First, we must speak of the season of 
 topping. This season is not to be fixed on by 
 the months, or by the days of the month, any 
 more than the time for cutting wheat or for 
 
riate. m 
 
TOPPING AND. STACKING. 
 
 taking off of the ears of corn is to be fixed on by 
 such rule. The time for topping is, when you, 
 upon stripping the husks open a Httle at the tops 
 of the ears, find the grains of the corn to be 
 hard ; not hard enough to grind ; not dry ; but 
 hard enough to resist the strong pressure of the 
 thumb-nail. A second criterion is, all the farina 
 having completely quitted the iussel, and the 
 tassel being completely dead and dry. A third 
 is, the perfect deadness of the ends of the silk as 
 at d, d, d ; where, instead of the bright green 
 that appeared before, hanging gracefully down, 
 like the beard of an extraordinarily cunning and 
 blaspheming Jew, you will perceive it to be a 
 little contemptible bunch of withered-up and 
 brown-looking stuff. When all these signs ap- 
 pear, the top and the blades have performed their 
 office, and the sooner they are taken away the 
 better ; because, after this, they do no good, and 
 only serve to retard the ripening of the ears by 
 the exclusion which they cause to the sun and the 
 wind. 
 
 119. You will observe, that, at this time, the 
 husk which covers the ear is still graen ; and, in- 
 deed, that the whole plant is still nearly green, 
 except the tassel and the silk. This state of the 
 plant will take place, earlier or later in the year, 
 according to the weather that you have had, and 
 according to the earliness or lateness of the plar.t- 
 
 G 
 
TOPPING AND [Chap. 
 
 ing, generally it will be about the end of the first 
 iceek in September ; sometimes a little earlier, 
 and sometimes a little later ; but, I recommend 
 you not to be regulated by the time of the year, 
 in this work of topping the corn, any more than 
 you would j)e in the work of gathering peaches : 
 you gather the peaches when they are ripe, with- 
 out the smallest attention to the season of the 
 year ; and you must top the com when it is fit 
 for topping, without any such reference. The 
 grain is soft, and if you press it with your thumb- 
 nail milk .will come out, until the plant be in the 
 state above described. You must not top the 
 corn as long as the grains are in this milky state, 
 even at the tips of the ears ; and these will re- 
 main in a milky state, some time after the grains 
 at the bottom of the ears are nearly hard. 
 
 120. 'X\\e act of topping is not very difficult 
 £o describe, nor is it very difficult to perform. 
 A man goes with a sharp knife, cuts off the top, 
 as at a : this brings off a part of the blades also, 
 jis will be seen In" a reference to Plate I. He 
 then snaps off the other blades, or strips them 
 off as near to the stem as he can, not taking any 
 very great pains about the matter ; and thus he 
 goes on from plant to plant. He lays the pro- 
 duce down in the interval, in convenient little 
 parcels, not so large as to prevent the tops and 
 blades being well dried, if the weather be fine 3 
 
VJL] STACKING. 
 
 -when they are well dried, they ought to be tied 
 into little bundles or sheaves, and one of the tops 
 will serve as a band to each sheaf of tops and 
 blades. This is the best way of tying- them up, 
 for the sheaves should be small, and this band is 
 sufficient. 
 
 121. No man will choose really wet weather 
 for this work; and he need not choose it; for, 
 there is generally some fine weather in the month 
 of September, in which month one half of the 
 barley in England is harvested ; and barley 
 requires a great deal more sun and wind to pre- 
 pare it for housing than the tops and blades of 
 corn require. Indeed, tiiis season of the year 
 gives as good a chance as any other for fine 
 weather ; and if these tops be well got in, 
 they are the most valuable fodder in the world. 
 The tops are stout, and require much more drying 
 than the blades. It is a good way, therefore, to 
 go along the row and first cut oflf the tops and lay 
 them down in parcels as a sort of bed to lay the 
 blades upon ; then to come after, cut off the 
 blades, and lay them down upon the tops. When 
 the blades are pretty dry, which will be at the 
 end of two or three days if the weather be 
 fair, tie up the sheaves, which will bring all the 
 tops to the outsides of the sheaves. Then set 
 up the sheaves in little shocks, and there let 
 them stand until the tops be sufficiently dry. 
 g2 
 
TOPPING AND [Chap. 
 
 122. I have made provision for distances 
 sufficient to admit a cart to go along without 
 running over tlie corn. The cart, going along 
 one interval, will take up as it goes the sheaves 
 in that interval and those in the two adjoining 
 intervals. The ox or the horse will, of course, 
 go up the furrow in the middle of the interval ; 
 and then, if the wheels of the cart be not, as 
 they ought not to be, more than four feet three 
 inches from each other, measuring from outside 
 to outside of the bonds of the wheels, neither of 
 the wheels can possibly disturb the corn. The 
 reader will here perceive the great use of the 
 distances that I have prescribed, and the necessity 
 of causing the ploughing to be true. 
 
 123. When the tops are ready for carting, 
 prepare a bed or steuddle for them about five or 
 six feet wide, and of length according to the 
 quantity which you have to stack. Make this 
 of fagots, or furze, or of any thing sufficient to 
 keep the bottom sheaves a foot at least clear of the 
 ground. Lay on the sheaves, butt-end outwards, 
 on each side of the stack, and bind them in the 
 middle by laying some sheaves long-ways. Carry 
 the stack to a convenient height, and thatch it 
 slenderly with straw. You have now a precious 
 deposite for the winter. It will be of greater or 
 less value, just as hay is, according to the weather 
 in which you have harvested it j but, it is liable to 
 
VII.] STACKING. 
 
 no inconvenience to which hay is not liable ; and, 
 weight for weight, and weather for weather, an 
 acre of corn tops and blades will give more 
 nutriment to cattle, and is of course more 
 valuable. These tops and blades are, by the 
 American farmers, reserved as the food of their 
 horses or oxen, in March, April, and May, before 
 the grass comes, and when the cattle have the 
 greatest labours of the year to perform. They 
 are given to race-horses, and other delicate and 
 valuable, or, at least, highly prized, horses. They 
 are excellent for cutting up into chaff; and, as 
 there are but very few oats grown in America, 
 and as corn is much more precious than rye or 
 barley, the cut chaff of corn tops is much given 
 to horses, mixed with whole barley or rye. 
 
 124. My corn-topping this year was, in the 
 first place, very late, owing to the wot summer. 
 In the next place, my intervals were so narrow, 
 that the plants, as they remained after the 
 topping, in a great measure shaded the tops and 
 blades as they lay upon the ground. Then, my 
 tillage had been such (mere flat hoeings) as to 
 suffer summer weeds to come np, in July and 
 August, and to get on to a good height by the 
 time that my topping began ; so that the tops 
 had to be laid down amongst these weeds, upon 
 which the dew was kept to nine or ten o'clock 
 in the day, by the complete shade which^ the 
 
TOPPING AND [Chap. 
 
 plants extended over the intervals. Besides all 
 which, there was the impossibility of going along 
 the intervals with the cart, to bring the tops away; 
 and, to bring them out on the backs of men, from 
 all the parts of a field three hundred and fifty yards 
 long, and, on an average, perhaps, three hun- 
 dred yards wide, was a job not to be undertaken 
 without almost a regiment of men, especially 
 as the men could not go cross-ways without 
 breaking off the corn that was left standing ; in 
 addition to all these, though we have had a fine 
 autumn, we have not, since my topping Ijegan, 
 had one whole week without more or less of 
 rain. 
 
 125. With intervals and summer cultivation 
 such as I have given instructions for, all these 
 difficulties and inconveniences would have been 
 completely avoided ; and, notwithstanding the 
 untowardness of the summei-, which was the very 
 worst for my corn which I ever knew, my tops 
 and blades would, if I had had intervals and 
 ploughings such as I have described, have been 
 got in in a perfectly good state ; for corn tops have 
 this great advantage over hay, that you need not 
 cut the whole field at one time. If you begin 
 mowing, vou must go on till the field or the 
 meadow be cut, and you must take your chance 
 as to weather. You must make your rick all at 
 once, or, at least, it is desirable so to do ; you 
 
VII.] STACKING. 
 
 cannot assemble your army of men, women, girls, 
 boys and horses or oxen, and disband them to-day, 
 call them out again to-morrow, send them away 
 in the morning, and bring them forth again in 
 the afternoon ; hay-cutting and making and 
 stacking, form an operation that must be begun, 
 continued, and ended, at one spell, or the hay is 
 more or less spoiled. Now, the business of corn- 
 topping may, with very little injury, be a fort- 
 night or three weeks, or even a mouth, in hand; 
 for, though one would wish to do the whole at 
 the precise minute when the plants are in the 
 proper state, no great injury, nor perhaps any 
 injury at all, arises to the ears if the corn be 
 never topped at all, provided the intervals be 
 sufficiently wide ; and I knew a Quaker, in Long 
 Island, who never did top his corn, but who cut 
 the whole plant off close to the ground, after the 
 blades had changed colour, tied them in small 
 sheaves, and set them up in sliocks to dry. 
 When perfectly dry, he pulled off the ears and 
 put by the whole plant for fodder 3 top, blades, 
 stalks and all. 
 
 126. So that there is no great harm that can 
 arise from a protraction of the work of topping. 
 You may choose your weather, both for topping 
 and housing, and the long and narrow stack, above 
 described, enables you to stack and to thatch 
 as you go. Generally, the application of the tops 
 
TOPPING AND [Chap. 
 
 and blades is that of giving them as food to 
 horses, or to milch cows, towards and in the 
 spring of the year, March, April, and the former 
 part of May. They are also given to sheep in 
 the winter ; and particularly to ewes that have 
 lambs. To a horse a bundle is given in the rack ; 
 to a cow in her crib ; and to sheep in little 
 racks, or in something that prevents them from 
 treading them about. All these animals will eat 
 them up clean, even to the stoutest part of the 
 tops. There is so much of sweetness in every 
 part of the plant, that all animals are fond of it. 
 Notwithstanding all the disadvantages above enu- 
 merated, in the case of my tops of this year, I 
 .should have had the greater part of them in very 
 fair order, had it not been for my expedition to 
 Penenden Heath ! There were then two days, 
 which, if I had been at home, would have brought 
 a large part of them into the stack in passable 
 condition. But the ecstatic delight of hearing 
 Mr. Shiel, at perceiving and having ocular and 
 auricular demonstration of the surprising fact, 
 that a man can be heard, in a north-west direc- 
 tion, to the distance, in a straight line, of more 
 than thirty miles, while the same words coming 
 from the same lips (or words said to be the same), 
 cannot be heard at more than about thirty inches 
 towards the south-east; the delight arising from 
 this discovery was not, and is not, for a moment, 
 
VII.] STACKING. 
 
 to be put in competition with the saving of a 
 crop of corn tops. However, after all, I set a 
 great value upon these tops, which I shall, ac- 
 cording to the practice in America, reserve to be 
 given to the cattle in the latter part of the win- 
 ter, or early in the spring. Of the stalks I shall 
 speak by-and-bye ; for even these are used, and 
 sometimes sold, as fodder in America. 
 
 g5 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 On the Harvesting of the Ears; on the Husking 
 of them ; on the Mode of keeping them ; on 
 the separating of the Grain from the Cobb ; 
 and on the uses of the Husks and the Cobbs. 
 
 127. The haivesting of the ears, or, rather, the 
 gathering of them, is performed when you see 
 the husk turned white on the outside; and, 
 indeed, when you find that the corn has hecome 
 quite hard. The operation is performed thus : 
 you take a cart, go up the interval, have a 
 couple of men, taking each of them one row 
 of plants, stripping off the ears as they go, and 
 tossing them into the cart. When you get 
 to the end of the field, the cart, if not full, 
 comes along another interval, where you do the 
 same ; and, at any rate, the cart ought not to 
 turn in the middle of the field; because there 
 is not room enough for it to turn in a breadth 
 of five feet, without crushing some of the plants. 
 Therefore, if your cart be full before you get to 
 the end of the field, you ought to go out to the 
 end, turn upon the head-land, and come down the 
 next or some other interval. 
 
HARVESTING EARS. 
 
 128. And here let me speak of head-lands. 
 Ill all cases where the drill husbandry and wide 
 spaces are followed, there must be head-lands to 
 turn upon; these need not be very wide; ten 
 feet are sufficient; and, they need not be idle 
 during the summer; for, after you have done 
 the last ploughing of your corn, which will take 
 place, perhaps, as late as the middle of August, 
 or later, you may sow the head-lands with the 
 early white turnip, which will come off and be 
 of a very good size, before the latter end of 
 October, especially if the land be nicely ploughed, 
 and the turnips nicely hoed; and this late sowing 
 of turnips is a complete protection against the 
 
 jlij ovflea^ which is the mortal enemy of this plant, 
 and the ravages of which it seldom escapes, if 
 sowed at an earlier season ; so that these head- 
 lands are, by no means, so much of lost ground. 
 
 129. Look now at plate ii. You will per- 
 ceive that each ear has a tail to it. You are 
 not to attempt to twist off the ear from the tail ; 
 but are to strip downwards, tail and all ; and 
 fling the whole into the cart together. When 
 you bring in the ears, tip them down in a shed 
 or barn's floor, as a convenient place for husking, 
 and as a protection against the wet. Then comes 
 the husking; that is to say, by stripping the 
 husk from the ears. This work is done by 
 children even : it is a considerable job if you 
 
HARVESTING EARS, [Chap. 
 
 have any quantity of corn ; but, all the children 
 of the farmer's family, and all the children from 
 the workhouse, if necessary, may be employed 
 at it. A child ten years of age will do the 
 ^vork pretty nearly as well as a man. The work 
 will come at a time of the year when there is 
 little or no employment for such persons ; the 
 wages are low ; and the cost comparatively little. 
 Then, it may be done by very slow degrees; 
 it is now the tenth of November, and one half 
 of my corn is yet hanging upon the stalks, with 
 advantage rather than the contrary. If you 
 apprehend wet weather, it is good to do as I 
 have now done j namely, get in a large quantity, 
 so as not to render it necessary to go actually out 
 in the wet to bring it in. One dry day, whether 
 frosty or not, is sufficient : if there be absence of 
 rain for one day, or half a day, and if there be 
 a little wind, it will enable you to re-commence 
 gathering. 
 
 130. The buskers are seated conveniently 
 round, or at the side of, a large heap : they 
 have baskets placed before them : they strip oif 
 the husks, twist them out by the tail, fling them 
 behind them, and toss the ears into a basket. 
 While this is going on, the farmer himself, or 
 some particularly trusty man, takes away the 
 baskets with the ears in them ; and, having 
 sorted them, puts the head-ears into the Corn- 
 
VIII.] AND HUSKING. 
 
 Crib, of which I shall say more presently. In 
 all corn fields there are some under-ears, as there 
 are in all wheat and other fields of grain. The 
 grain in these under-ears is inferior in size, 
 sometimes in ripeness, and sometimes in other 
 respects, and is of a quality rather inferior to 
 the grains of the head-ears. These under-ears 
 generally amount to about a sixth part of 
 the crop ; but, though of inferior quality, they 
 are by no means without their value ; they are 
 good for the purpose of fatting hogs, sheep, 
 and poultry. 
 
 131. I have said that the head-ears are to be 
 put into the corn-crib, which is, in fact, a little 
 granary standing upon stones, or upon posts 
 surrounded with tin, as a protection against rats 
 and mice. The ends and the sides are not to 
 be boarded, but lathed with interstices, too nar- 
 row to let out a full ear of corn. Here it is, 
 that the corn is kept; because, though in the 
 hottest countries, there remains so much of 
 moisture in the cobb which feeds the grains, 
 and in which they are, indeed, planted by nature, 
 that, if the ears were to be put together in great 
 quantities, they would mould more or less, if shut 
 up in any situation that would exclude them from 
 the sun, the air, and the winds. Mould never 
 comes in the open air, at least it never does to 
 substances of this sort. 
 
HARVESTING EARS. 
 
 132. The reader will now refer to Plate III, 
 on the opposite page, and to the following 
 description appertaining to it, as I come to the 
 several things, the representations of which it 
 
 contains : a, is a transverse section of an 
 
 ear, of perfect growth, natural size. The figure 
 exhibits the centre or pith of the cobb, hollow, 
 in a circular form, and about one eighth of 
 an inch in diameter ; the solid part of the cobb, 
 in the form of a hexagon, about one third or 
 nearly half an inch in diameter ; six stems, com- 
 mencing or having their base upon the circle of 
 pith, and, almost immediately from the base, 
 divided or branching into two, in which double 
 form they grow, each issuing from one of the sides 
 of the solid part of the cobb, and then j)ushlng 
 through a fine husky substance of very slight 
 texture ; the grains growing on the extremities 
 of the stems, Ijeing embedded in and wedged 
 tight by these husks; the spear, or germ, to each 
 grain is plainly perceivable on the side, with the 
 point or eye of the germ near to the surface 
 of the grain, from which points start the indi- 
 vidual threads or silks, which, collected at 
 the end, as in Plate I, are termed " the silk :" 
 
 b and c, are two grains, corresponding with 
 
 the foregoing in proportion, rubbed from the 
 cobb, and exhibited on both sides : d, a per- 
 fect ear, full length, on a scale diminished from 
 the original : e, the cobb, proportionate to the 
 

HUSKING. 
 
 ear d : f^ the elevation of one end of a corn- 
 crib : g^ scale of ten feet, corresponding to 
 
 the dimensions of the corn-crib. 
 
 133. The Crib, as seen in the Plate, is three 
 feet wide at the bottom, seven feet from the 
 bottom to the eaves measuring up the side, and 
 seven feet wide at the top. These are the 
 dimensions of my cribs ; but, they were made 
 in my absence, and nearly at a guess from 
 recollection. I would recommend them to be 
 made two feet wide at the bottom, five feet high 
 lip the sides to the eaves, and five feet across at 
 the top. They would hold a much smaller 
 quantity this way; but, the air would circulate 
 more freely j and the corn would be better pre^ 
 served. 
 
 134. I beg the reader, if he be a farmer, to 
 be so good as to think a little of the plague, the 
 everlasting plague, and the everlasting waste of 
 ricks and mows. Then let him look at a corn- 
 crib or two, and there see his crop, in a state 
 of perfect security, for any length of time that 
 he may choose. Here, there is no throwing of 
 corn away amongst the straw and the chaff; 
 here, there is no devouring by the rats and the 
 mice. At a barn's door, in thrashing time, thou- 
 sands of sparrows are feeding from morning till 
 night, each taking away during the day a com- 
 mon wine-glass-full of the grain; and, though 
 pigs and poultry do make a shift to come in for 
 
HARVESTING EARS, [Chap. 
 
 a share of what is thrown out, there is still a 
 great deal left to be trampled into the dirt and 
 to be totally destroyed ; and, as to rats and mice, 
 if you keep a moiv standing until the spring of 
 the year, which you are frequently compelled to 
 do, and even into the middle of the summer ; 
 if you do this, the rats and mice have a good 
 tenth part of your crop, in spite of rat-catchers 
 and mice-destroyers, and of all the traps and 
 cats that you can set or put into motion. Even 
 ricks are not always a protection against these 
 vermin. The mice will get into ricks in spite of 
 you. The rats may be got out by ferrets if they 
 get in, but they frequently are not; and you 
 often see holes in the thatch out of which they 
 come to lick up the rain or the dew. Ingenuity 
 has been exhausted in attempts to discover the 
 means to rid farm buildings and yards of these 
 vermin, and exhausted too, without any thing 
 worthy of the name of success. 
 
 135. The corn -crib is a complete ))rotection 
 against all these losses and inconveniences ; and, 
 which is another great advantage, you know 
 the amount of your crop the moment you have 
 husked your corn ; for, a bushel of ears produces 
 exactly, or so nearly as to justify one in calling it 
 exactly,half-a-bushelof corn. That this is the case 
 I need only tell the reader, that, when corn is sold 
 in the ear in America, a bushel of ears is counted 
 for half-a-bushel of corn. I think that the pro- 
 
VIII.] AND HUSKING. 
 
 portion must be in favour of my corn, because 
 these ears being shorter, they will lie closer 
 in the l)ushel, than the long ears of the Ame- 
 rican Corn : but of this I am not quite sure. 
 Knowing the amount of your crop at once, 
 you know how much you can sell, and are able 
 to determine how nmch you shall use upon the 
 farm. In addition to this advantage, there is 
 another, equally great ; namely, that of being 
 able to choose your time of selling. For, you 
 do not, as will be presently seen, need to wait the 
 slow operations of the flail ; and, besides, it is 
 not necessary, to sell as you thrash j for it is 
 very inconvenient to keep the grain by you after 
 it be thrashed 5 and, in the case of barley, the 
 straw of which is wanted for fodder, you must 
 thrash by slow degrees as the fodder is wanted ; 
 and may keep lingering along at this work up to 
 the month of May. Whereas, the fodder from 
 the corn has been safely stacked in September, 
 or in the latter end of August ; and there is your 
 corn in the crib ready for the market at the 
 shortest notice, you knowing to a bushel how 
 much you have to sell. 
 
 13G. You will as often sell it in the ear as in 
 grain ; or, as the Americans call it, and as we 
 must call it, " shelled corn." I am now about 
 to speak of the manner of separating the grains 
 from the cobb. In Plate III, e. represents a 
 
HARVESTING EARS, [Chap. 
 
 cobb ', and c, a little group of grains ; b repre- 
 sents an ear before the grain be taken oif. The 
 grains v/hen they are taken off the cobb, are, as 
 I have just said, called shelled corn ; and the 
 operation of taking them off is not called thrash- 
 ing, but shelling, and it is performed by farmers 
 in general, in the following manner. They take 
 a piece of iron, that has a sharpish edge to it, 
 and fix it across a pretty broad tub 5 they then 
 take an ear in their two hands, and, scraping it 
 long-ways across this piece of iron, the grains 
 fall into the tub, and they throw the cobb aside. 
 A stout man, a man with strong wrists, will shell 
 from twenty to thirty bushels a day in this man- 
 ner ; and the American farmers, generally, do it 
 in cold weather, in the winter, and most commonly 
 choose the fire-side as the scene of operation. 
 However, you do see them, when hard pushed, 
 actually threshing it with a flail. In this case, 
 they fling down a large heap on a barn -floor, 
 hang up some cloths to prevent the grain from 
 flying over the sides of the floor; and with a flail, 
 having a swingel (as our people call it) about 
 two feet long, and as big round as a smallish 
 man's Avrist, fastened to the end of a hand-staff, 
 as we call it, six feet long, and made also of some 
 tough wood, a Yankee fellow will, I dare say, 
 knock out a hundred bushels a day of shelled 
 corn. This, however, is regarded as a slovenly 
 
VIII.] AND HUSKING. 
 
 way of doing the work, it is certainly attended 
 with some waste, and I have never seen it done but 
 once or twice. Extraordinarily lazy fellows spread 
 it six inches deep over a barn's floor (the barn's 
 floors are very large), where they trample it off 
 the cobb by the feet of horses or oxen, as they 
 do almost all of their wheat and other grain. But 
 I saw, before I left America, a beautiful machine 
 for shelling corn. The ears were put into a hop- 
 per, a wheel was turned round by one man, the 
 cobbs came tumbling out of the side of the ma- 
 chine, and the grain came out at the front, or 
 the grain came out of the bottom, and the cobbs 
 at the front ; I thought that the man shelled a 
 bushel a minute, but my son James, who was with 
 me when I saw the machine at work, thinks that 
 it took five minutes to shell the bushel of corn, and 
 neither of us can recollect whether the quantity 
 applied to ears or to shelled corn 5 but, sup- 
 posing it to be applied to ears, and supposing the 
 time to be five minutes in the place of one; here 
 are twelve bushels of ears shelled in an hour, with 
 the greatest facility imaginable j and, six bushels 
 of shelled corn are the effect of the hour's la- 
 bour. I have written to America for one of 
 these machines, and if that come, which I am 
 pretty sure it will, there is an end of all trouble 
 about the shelling ; but, suppose it be shelled 
 by hand, in the manner first described, a man 
 
HARVESTING EARS, [Chap. 
 
 •will shell, with great ease, twenty bushels a-tlaj', 
 and sit and gossip with his wife, or hear his neigh- 
 bour, who has nothing to do, read the news 
 at the same time, and shell four or five times as 
 much corn as he can thrash of wheat or barley, 
 leaving out of account all the plague of winnow- 
 ing and the rest of the fuss which appertains to 
 the cleansing of grain. 
 
 137. In the next Chapter I am to speak of the 
 various uses to which the grain is applicable : 
 but, as we have now been speaking of the shell- 
 ing, let me observe that the usual piece of iron 
 made use of for this job in America is a bayonet, 
 which, as a great many poor souls have felt to 
 their cost, has three sharp edges. The Yankee, 
 putting a stout piece of Hickory or White 
 Oak into the socket, runs the point of the bayo- 
 net, or hammers it, into one side of the tub, 
 aliout three inches from the top ; he then 
 fastens the other end of the piece of wood to the 
 other side of this pretty broad tub. He then 
 takes the ears and shells off the grains by rasp- 
 ing the cobb down upon the upper edge of the 
 bayonet. We are instructed that swords shall 
 be turned into plough-shares and spears into 
 pruning-hooks, which I dare say will come, some 
 time or other ; but, here, we already see the 
 bayonet turned into a flail ; and, this practice is 
 universal, mind you ; for I never, during the 
 
VIII.] AND HUSKING. 
 
 nineteen years of my life, that I passed amongst 
 the corn people, saw any thing but a bayonet 
 used for this purpose. In the South of France, 
 where the people have never had the happi- 
 ness to acquire hberty by the means of a 
 revohitionary war and royal invasions, the far- 
 mers do, I am told, generally make use of the 
 handle of the frymg -pan for this purpose, which 
 they fix across the tub, edge-ways, in two 
 notches made in the sides of the tub to receive 
 the implement. But, the Yankees, who always 
 call the bayonet uncle George's toasting-fork 
 (and God knows the Cornwallises, and Bur- 
 goynes and Clintons left a pretty parcel in that 
 country behind them), invariably make use of 
 that royal and at once warlike and culinary and 
 agricultural implement. 
 
 138. In the next Chapter, I shall have to speak 
 of the various uses to which the grain is applica- 
 ble, and to describe minutely the mode of appli- 
 cation ; but, as I have here treated so far, of the 
 husks and the cobbs, and have before treated of the 
 stalks, I shall here speak of the uses of all these. 
 The husk, properly so called, consists of those 
 delicate leaves by which the ear is enveloped. 
 These are finer and finer, tougher and tougher, 
 and more and more elastic, as they approach the 
 ear. The number to each ear is generally nine, 
 sometimes twelve, and sometimes as many as 
 
HARVESTING EARS, [Chap. 
 
 fifteen or eighteen. The texture is nearly as fine 
 as that of coarse silk ; they are tough ; and upon 
 the interior ones one may write tolerably well. 
 In all the corn countries, they are used in the 
 making of mattresses, and in all those cases 
 where our upholsterers use hay or straw. For 
 these purposes they are excellent, being elastic, 
 very durable, and, though in use for an age, 
 never crumble into dust like hay or straw; and, 
 therefore, do not harbour and tend to assist in 
 generating, those creeping or skipping things, 
 which, by what right of nature I know not, claim 
 the privilege (like other claimants that 1 could 
 name if I would) of interfering with our peace 
 and of sucking our blood ; and which, if they 
 could speak, would certainly be as clamourous 
 for emancipation as any of the rest. 
 
 139. Upon this subject a gentleman has 
 written to me to inform me, that, a captain of a 
 vessel made him a present, many years ago, of a 
 mattress made of corn husks ; that it served, after 
 having served the captain on board of ship, as a 
 bed for the informant's children for several years ; 
 that, at the end of that time, " part of it was 
 taken out to stuff the seat and back of an 
 arm-chair; and that, from a desire to save 
 expense, these husks, which had already served 
 so long, and which had been, in the case of the 
 children, put to so very severe a test, are now. 
 
VIIL] AND HUSKING. 
 
 to this very hour, performing their office hi an 
 easy chair. In short, all the poorer classes of 
 people in corn countries have scarcely any 
 beds but those made of these husks ; and I saw 
 the time in my life when I should never have 
 thought it a hardship to lie in a bed made 
 of the same materials. Only think of the im- 
 mense advantage of having such bedding-mate- 
 rial for mattresses, for the stuffing of cushions, 
 for coaches, and the like, which, being stuffed 
 with hay or straw, soon become nearly as hard 
 as the boards upon which they are placed, with 
 the positive disadvantage of being in lumps, in- 
 stead of being level and smooth. I have not 
 very often ridden in stage-coaches, but if I were 
 a constant traveller in them, 1 would certainly 
 join in an humble petition to the coach- masters, 
 to remove the grievance of cushions stuffed with 
 hay or straw. Think of the great convenience 
 of children's beds ; think of the application of 
 these things to schools; but, above all things, 
 think of the ease and of the rest to tlie weary 
 bones of the labourer, obtained from the outsides 
 of the ears of the corn, which have grown in 
 his own garden, and which will largely contri- 
 bute to his food for the year ! 
 
 140, But, now for the " march of mind" now 
 for something to enchant Doctok Black ; now 
 for the Edinburgh Reviewers, who, by-the-bye, 
 
 H 
 
HARVESTIKG EARS, [Chap. 
 
 have lately been, not pilfering from me, not 
 robbing me, but actually plundering me by 
 wholesale, in an article on the motives which 
 led to, and the consequence of, the " Protes- 
 tant RKFORAfATiox ;" now for these feeloso- 
 phers ; now for the London University; now 
 for the schoolmaster, who, Mr. Brougham tells 
 us, is actually uhroad ; and, by-the-bye, Mr. 
 Brougham himself seems to have been abroad 
 for now more than half a year ; for, instead of 
 speeches, such as that memorable one, which 
 enabled a reporter to go, after he had heard the 
 exordium, to Windsor, to see his sweetheart, and 
 come back in time to hear the peroration ; in- 
 stead of speeches like this, we have heard only, 
 now and then, a few short, detached, and inco- 
 herent sentences. Like the principal character 
 in a duck-hunt, he is more out of sight than in 
 Bight. The chief interest in this sport consists 
 in the curiosity which is excited, at every dive of 
 the duck, to know at v^'hat jwint he will come up 
 o(jam ', and, as this learned person is now in 
 ^\■hat may be called a dive^ curiosity of the like 
 nature exists with regard to him. But, in the 
 meanwhile, and to console him during his dive, 
 1 give it as my opinion, that the husks of Corn 
 will vi\dikQ paper to print his speeches on. 
 
 141. Such arQ the uses of the husks ; and, if 
 you want them Mither for the purpose of rest- 
 
VIII.] AND HUSKING. 
 
 ing the body nor enlightening the mind, they do 
 very well as fodder for neat cattle and sheep ; 
 and, next, we come to the uses of the Cobb : 
 and we must call all these things by the same 
 names, or we shall never understand one another. 
 It is not I who have made the names, I take 
 them as I found them, and just in the same 
 state I hand them over to the people of this 
 country. The Cobb, as at e, in Plate lil, is a 
 spongy cylindrical thing round which the grains 
 are placed in rows ; and each grain has its stem 
 coming out of the cylinder. When the husking 
 takes place, the grains are jerked out of the 
 sockets, and the Cobb remains entire. I recol- 
 lect but three uses that Corn-Cobbs are applied 
 to J first, as corks for bottles, of which they 
 make the most convenient things in the world 
 for temporary use. Never did I see any other 
 corks in a farm house in America. The Yankee 
 puts it into his bottle to carry drink to his work 
 in the fields ; the wife puts it into her bottles, of 
 various sorts, which hold the spirits, the cherry- 
 brandy, and other such things calculated to 
 lighten the head and to cheer the heart of man 
 and woman. The Corn-Cobb, as you will per- 
 ceive, tapers from the point to the butt end. It, 
 therefore, will fit almost any bottle, and it is of 
 any length that you please ; for it snaps off at 
 any part, in a perfectly clear and smooth man- 
 H 2 
 
HARVESTING EARS, [Chap. 
 
 ner ; it being an universal saying in America, 
 " snap off as short as a Corn-Cobb," which is 
 equivalent to, and much more correct than, our 
 saving of " snuji off as short as a carrot." I do 
 not suppose that the corks would be quite equal 
 to the tree cork, for the bottling of wine, or beer, 
 or cider ; but, as I said before, they do extremely 
 well for all ordinary purposes about a farm- 
 house ; and even in this way they are of some 
 use. 
 
 142. Secondhj, they are excellent fuel ; not 
 feeble in their heat like straw, not slow in light- 
 ing like wood. Tiicy give a very pleasant little 
 heat, without auv odour at all ; and in the late 
 part of the spring, in the summer, and in the 
 early part of the autumn, they make a nice little 
 fire for any temporary purpose : and if applied 
 in this way, which is their lowest office, they save 
 in fuel several pounds in the year to any farmer 
 who has from five to ten acres of corn. When 
 €0711 is flung down to hogs in the ear, the hogs 
 thrust them into the dirt ; but they are found to 
 be so convenient even in America, that farmers, 
 ■when they remove the dung from the sties, fre- 
 quently rake them out, and, when they are dry, 
 put them by for fuel, though wood is so plentiful 
 with him, as it necessarily must be. The sheep 
 leave them pretty clean ; and, therefore, their 
 leavings are taken for fuel at once. 
 
VIII.] AND HUSKING. 
 
 143. But, thirdly, they are beaten by steam or 
 water power into fine chaff. / never saw this 
 done, but I have heard of it frecjuently, and I 
 have several times seen the chaff, which is called 
 COBB-CHAFF, and which must be excellent, as it 
 has served for the bed in which the grains grew, 
 and as it consists, indeed, partly of little shells 
 left in the sockets by the grain. ' If corn be 
 given to oxen or cows in the ear, which is gene- 
 rally the case, when they are fatting, the neat 
 cattle do not take the grains off the ear, but take 
 the ear into the mouth, and grind grain, cobb, 
 and all. If you give the ears to a horse, he bites 
 off the grain with his fore teeth, and, unless hard 
 pressed, leaves the cobb. The sheep does the 
 same ; the same does the hog : but poultry can- 
 not manage the thing without having the grain 
 taken off for them. 
 
 144. Admire, now, you that can admire any 
 tiling, the ingenuity of the Yankees, in order to 
 save their own bones from labour. Suppose a 
 farmer to have some oxen to fat, some hogs, 
 some sheep, turkeys, geese, ducks, and fowls. 
 He goes twice a-day to his corn crib; and at 
 once, twice, or whatever is necessary, carries out 
 a parcel of ears upon his shoulder, to a piece of 
 pasture land, or into an orchard as near as pos- 
 sible to the farm-house, and there, leaning the 
 basket on one side upon his shoulder, he walks 
 
HARVESTING EARS, [Chap. 
 
 along and lets the ears tumble out, till he has 
 covered a space of sufficient length to accommo- 
 date all the feeders conveniently. Then the oxen, 
 pigs, and sheep, are driven to the spot, for 
 which they are always ready, and to which the 
 poultry most punctually come of their own ac- 
 cord. The oxen, in taking up the ears and 
 grinding them, let grains and bits of ears fall ; 
 the hogs, while they are feeding upon the ears, 
 let some tumble out also ; the sheep do the same. 
 The oxen will not pick up dirty bits; and, there- 
 fore, when they have gone over the prime part 
 of the meal, they just look over it again, and 
 poke away the hogs with their horns as long as 
 there is any part of the corn remaining which 
 they have a fancy for. The sheep leave off as 
 soon as all the clean corn has disappeared ; the 
 hogs go on taking up the single grains, dirt and 
 all, and the poultry, taking care to keep skip- 
 ping out of the way of the grunters, pick up the 
 crumbs. So that, at the end of the meal, there 
 is not left even the fragment of a bit of grain, 
 and only a few of the cobbs, which the oxen have 
 not found clean enough for them after the shel- 
 lings of the sheep. 
 
 145. Ingenuity will soon discover some mode 
 of grinding or crushing these cobbs into chaff; 
 and very valuable that chaff will be found. 
 And, now, there only remains, in this chapter, to 
 
VIII.] AND HUSKING. 
 
 speak of the uses of the stalks. By looking 
 again at Plate U, you will see that these are but 
 little things, after all the rest of the plant has 
 been removed. If, however, they be cut off close 
 to the ground, which need not be till the middle 
 or end of November; if thus cut off and tied in 
 little bundles with straw, or, which is better, with 
 little osiers ; and if stacked and kept dry, the 
 oxen and cows will eat them, in the spring of the 
 year, or the far greater part of them. 1 have 
 bought Corn stalks in Long Island to give to 
 my cattle \ and, if I recollect rightl) , I gave 
 for them about a fourth part of the price of 
 common hay. There is no part of the plant 
 which cattle will not eat 3 it abounds in a sugary 
 quality from the earth to the top of the tassel. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 On the various Uses to ivhich the Grain is appli- 
 cable^ containiny minute instructions with re- 
 gard to the modes of application. 
 
 14G. We have now seen the means which we 
 are to use in order to obtain a crop of corn. We 
 have seen how the produce is to be managed 
 until it be brought into a state in which it is fit 
 for use in the shape of grain. We have now to 
 see the uses of this grain, and the manner of 
 applying it to these several uses. 
 
 147. The first fruits of the crop are to be ap- 
 plied to the feeding of pigs and other animals 
 upon a farm : I mean animals with the exception 
 of man. I vvill, therefore, first speak of the uses 
 of this grain, as thus applied ; and will, then, 
 speak of its uses, as applied in the shape of food 
 for their master. I shall be compelled, with re- 
 gard to the latter, in particular, to be very minute 
 in my descriptions and instructions ; because, 
 without that minuteness, these descriptions and 
 instructions would be too imperfect to enable 
 people to act upon them with the certainty of 
 being right ; and without this certainty, not one 
 in a thousand would act upon them at all. I shall. 
 
USES OF THE CORN. 
 
 in order to make myself as easily understood as 
 possible, divide my matter as follows : pig-feed- 
 ing ; sheep-feeding ; ox and cow-feeding; poultry- 
 feeding ; horse-feeding. Then when 1 come to 
 the grain, as affording food for man, I shall 
 arrange my matter as follows : porridge, mush, 
 homany, samp, puddings, cakes, bread. I shall 
 place the name of each part of the subject at the 
 beginning of the paragraph that will treat of it, 
 allotting one paragraph to each part, the several 
 parts being designated by the names as above. 
 
 148. Pig-feeding. — In the last chapter, I 
 mentioned the under ears or nubbings as they are 
 called in America; and observed that these, like 
 the under ears of wheat and other grain are not 
 only imperfect as to their number of grains, but 
 also sometimes as to their state of ripeness and 
 other circumstances. The imbbings are more 
 perishable than the other part of the crop, and 
 are not worth so much room and other trouble. 
 They are never shelled in America, except under 
 very pressing circumstances ; but, the moment 
 the husking begins, the hogs begin to receive the 
 nubbings, for the purpose of fattening. They are 
 tossed down upon the ground in' the manner 
 which I have before described j or, if hogs alone 
 be wanted to be fatted, the Americans usually 
 make a good large temporary sty, on the front 
 of some shed, to serve as a sleeping place for the 
 H 5 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 hogs ; or, they build a little temporary shed for 
 the purpose, and cover it with corn stalks. Here, 
 the nubbings, and, when they are gone, the per- 
 fect ears, are tossed over to the hogs, wet or dry, 
 though the weather be rain or snow, and 
 whether the ground be hard or in a state of mud. 
 The hogs get at every grain. No troughs, except 
 to put in water for them to drink ; no expense of 
 grinding ; no sloppings about with meal ; no 
 waste of this sort, which is always very great ; and, 
 thus fed, the hogs get as fat as ever hogs were seen 
 in this world. Tliey are, in Long Island, gene- 
 rally of the old-fashioned long white breed ; they 
 are farrowed in March, or thereabouts ; when 
 first taken from the sow they are fed upon milk 
 and corn-meal ; they then graze and have a 
 certain portion of whole corn given them during 
 the summer; they are always killed in the month 
 of November, they frequently weigh from fifteen 
 to twenty score, that is to say, from three 
 to four hundred pounds; and they make the 
 fattest and finest pork that ever was made in 
 the world; it not being the fashion in America 
 to make bacon, except of the gammons, which 
 are cured and smoked as ours are, and which are 
 extraordinarily fine. The great cities are supplied 
 with them ; you find them in all the taverns in 
 the country ; and thousands upon thousands of 
 barrels of them are exported to the West Indies, 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 and to divers other parts of the world. The pork, 
 also, is exported in great quantities ; but tlie 
 exported pork is seldom wholly fatted upon corn. 
 Acorns do three parts of the business, and the 
 pork, though as fine to look at, is of greatly in- 
 ferior quality. That which the farmer keeps for 
 himself and for home consumption, he fats in the 
 manner which I have described. Every English- 
 man who has been in America, unless a conceited 
 fool, and is resolved to find nothing good amidst 
 all the blessings which this world affords, will 
 say, that he never tasted of hog-meat, young or 
 old, so fine as that which he has eaten in America ; 
 and there is no instance, I never knew of such a 
 thing in my life, as the fatting of hog or pig, 
 young or old, upon anything but unground Indian 
 Corn, generally given in the ear ; but always in 
 the whole grain. Then, even the little pigs, at 
 three weeks old, while with their mother, will 
 begin to crack the corn. She, having to give 
 milk, is fed partly with slops from the house, but 
 the principal part of her food also is the whole 
 corn. The pigs at the end of two months, which 
 is the proper time for weaning them, eat the corn 
 so well and eat so much of it, that they care very 
 little about the sow, and do not miss her when 
 she is taken from them, or they from her. In 
 order to push them on, to make them large for 
 fatting in the fall ; they have all the milk that 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 can be spared from the house; and, if the mill 
 be near at hand, and circumstances render it 
 convenient, corn-meal is mixed with the milk, 
 into a sort of porridge, which is given to these 
 young pigs during a month or two after their 
 weaning ; and, oh God ! how superior is this 
 diet, not to that of the miserable human beings 
 in Ireland, but to that, ashamed I am to say it, 
 of the far greater part, nay of nine- tenths, or 
 nineteen-twentieths, of those, in England, from 
 whose labour come all that we eat, drink, wear ; 
 all that covers us, both by day and night, and all 
 that conveys us from one place to another ! Never 
 was such a thing heard of in America, as a 
 human being sitting down to make a meal of 
 potatoes. The very beggars (for there are some 
 that go expressly from Europe, to beg, and travel 
 with commissions for the purpose), even these 
 beggars would, were you to tender them a mess 
 of potatoes, as a meal, fling it in your face. The 
 English farmer, who knows well all about the 
 grindings, the mixings, the sloppings of barley- 
 meal ; who knows well all the inventions of 
 troughs and hutches, and the rest of the devices 
 for preventing a waste of the barley-meal; and who 
 knows also, that, though hogs will eat dry 
 and whole barley, they will not fatten upon it ; 
 he knows that to give it as loeaning-food to a 
 pig would be a sort of madness j he knows, that 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 though with time an old hog will get fat upon 
 whole pease or beans, it requires a long time to do 
 the business ; and that, in the case of beans par- 
 ticularly, the quality of the meat is vastly inferior 
 to that which is fatted upon barley-meal ; he 
 knows what a plague there is in the feeding, one 
 hog fighting with another and driving him from 
 the trough, while he must see that when the corn 
 is tossed about the sty, there can be no such 
 contest for the food ; he must see, besides all the 
 rest, that there is no thrashing and winnowing in 
 the case of the corn j no calling of men off from 
 pressing work in the fields, to hurry away and 
 thrash out some corn for the pigs^ and get it to the 
 mill and back again ; no " D — n that boy, he is 
 not come back from mill, and these 'ere pigs ivill 
 be starved." He will see that there are his nub- 
 bings and his ears in the crib, always ready ; and 
 that, if he do not give them to the pigs, he will, I 
 am sure, think it just and reasonable that he him- 
 self should perish for want of food. In the case 
 of poor men, reserving until by-and-bye what more 
 I have to say about the advantages of this crop 
 to them, let me here observe, that, when a poor 
 man has a pig, and has the means of purchasing 
 the barley, how is he to get it to the mill and back 
 again, to say nothing of the expense of grinding ? 
 There must be sacks, there must be a trough, there 
 must be a tub j all which are unknown in fatting 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 with corn. I practise, as far as I can, that which 
 I preach. I have fatted and fed hogs and pigs 
 with corn always, when I could get it. I made, 
 last winter, the fattest hogs, and made the finest 
 bacon, that I ever saw in my life. Three 
 Buckingam^hire hogs, farrowed in July, 1826, 
 weighed twenty -seven score each, or jive hundred 
 and forty pounds each, in February, 1828. They 
 were fatted wholly upon corn ; and, for not much 
 more than half the expense of barley-meal, or 
 pea-fatting. I bought my corn, or rather, a very 
 good friend did it for me, at Mark-lane ; and just 
 about the price of coarse barley at that time ; 
 that is to sav, barley not fit for malting. This will 
 not be the case, however, in a very short time ; 
 for, when the value of this corn is known, the 
 price of it will be, bushel for bushel, just one half 
 of the way, between prime barley and jmme 
 wheat. If barley sell at forty, and wheat at eighty^ 
 sound corn will sell at sixty. 
 
 149. Sheep- FEEDING. Sheep will get as fat 
 as sheep can get by living solely upon corn. It 
 may be given to them either in the ear or shelled. 
 It ought to be given in a clean trough, sheltered 
 from the wet and snow ; and the sheep may lie 
 in a yard, or in an orchard, or in any place where 
 it is convenient for them to be. I, last winter, 
 bought some fat Lincolnshire sheep at Smith- 
 field. Every grazier and farmer knows, and they 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 all tell you, that it is next to impossible, do what 
 you will, to keep the flesh of these sheep up, 
 after taking them from their rich pasture ; and, 
 indeed, they say, that, even if your pasture be 
 more rich in itself, the sheep will, more or less, 
 fall off in their flesh. It does not suit me to kill 
 sheep at once, and, therefore, these six were 
 killed, one every week. When four of these had 
 been killed, 1 happened to be visited by a butcher, 
 who has, I dare sav, examined the condition of 
 more sheep than ever he had hairs upon his head 
 and upon his face in the bargain. He had been 
 warning me against keeping sheep, against buying 
 live fat sheep, unless I killed them directly ; and 
 this for the reason before mentioned ; and he 
 was totally incredulous as to the effect of the 
 corn. After this he went out into the yard, and 
 examined the sheep ; and he declared, that, they 
 had not only not lost flesh, but that they were 
 actually thriving. So much for fat sheep ', and 
 the farmer will know that that which will add 
 fat to a Lincolnshire wether, which is already fat, 
 cannot fail to fatten any other sort of sheep. 
 But the master-work of farming, with regard to 
 sheep, is the rearing and fattening oi house-lambs. 
 To do this, oats, bran, grains, cut chaff fer- 
 mented, all sorts of schemes are resorted to, to 
 make the ewes give milk ; and, to give the 
 lambs a little food at the same time, which shall 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 keep their flesh white, and help to fatten them ; 
 so that they may be fine and fat at two months 
 old, or less. J bought, last year, ten Somerset- 
 shire ewes, which dropped their lambs in the 
 first week of January. I made a fold on a 
 piece of grass-land near the yard, gave them 
 some white turnips to eat there, and brought 
 them in, at the usual times, to suckle their lambs, 
 and shut them in the house with the lambs all 
 the night. The ewes had whole corn as 
 much as they chose ; and the lambs, besides 
 their milk, had corn-meal given them in little 
 troughs in their own pen. I did not intend 
 to sell the lambs ; but, at about two months old, 
 some of them less than that, I sent four to 
 Smithfield, which were there sold for thirty- 
 six shillings a piece ; and the salesman declared 
 that, for their age, they were the finest and fattest 
 he had ever seen. Away goes all the fuss, then, 
 about " making house-lamb," as it is called. 
 With the help of corn, house-lamb will make 
 itself, and corn is the fatting stuff of all the early 
 lamb in America. My ten ewes (one having been 
 blowed by the grass in the meadow, or with slime 
 licked up after the floods) brought seventeen lambs. 
 The mother of two of them died. These two had 
 new cow's-milk given them three times a day, out 
 of a bottle. They had corn-meal roughly ground 
 to eat all the while or as often as they liked, and 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 these were two of the finest lamhs in the whole 
 lot. One of them (they were hoth ewes) was the 
 fattest lamb of its age that I ever saw in my life) 
 and after it was about seven weeks old, we ceased 
 to give it milk and it lived entirely upon the 
 Kieal. I bought, besides, thirty South-down ewes, 
 several of these (as many as six or seven) I lost 
 from the same cause that I have mentioned before. 
 The lambs of the remainder I kept at the house, 
 and fed as before described. These South-down 
 lambs were dropped in February, or early in 
 March, and there were about four-and-twenty of 
 them in number. These fatted equally well with 
 the Somerset lambs ; and from about the second 
 week in February to some time in July, we had 
 alvyays one lamb a week to eat and sometimes 
 two. After the grass came in great abundance, 
 the ewes and lambs ran together in the grass, 
 always as fat as they could walk. Thirty-eight 
 lambs is no bad allowance for one family for 
 about twenty-two weeks. However, long before 
 all the lambs were gone, we began upon the 
 mothers, according to the maxim of Swift, 
 with regard to the squirearchy of Ireland, who, 
 though everlastingly shifting from principle to 
 principle in politics; though ready to change 
 their creed of to-day for that of to-morrow, on 
 the most moderate terms imaginable, are, it 
 seems, no changelings in the affair of feasting 3 for 
 
USES To WHICH [Chap. 
 
 the Dean observed, when he was recommending 
 them to eat young children, that those who had 
 devoured the parent, had certainly the best title 
 to the offspring. We differed from the Irish 
 squirearchy merely in the order of proceeding; 
 having begun upon the children we had to finish 
 with the ^'mothers," the father, owing to the habit 
 of polygamy, permitted among these innocent 
 creatures, being beyond the reach of our mouths 
 and our knives. I killed, on the second week 
 in October, as fine fat ewes as ever were seen ; 
 and, in the middle of October, I sold twelve of 
 these to the butcher, at a very good price, they 
 being as fat as moles. I have no pasture-land 
 except my meadows: they are very wet in win- 
 ter; and they kill the sheep as before described. 
 Besides, all this land about here causes the foot 
 rot, in the fall and in the winter, and this foot 
 rot is a most troublesome thing, and very 
 injurious to the sheep. Almost the whole of 
 my ewes suffered from this cruel disorder. I, 
 therefore, shall keep no sheep, except from the 
 first of May until the middle of October. They 
 are, during that season, very convenient for killing 
 t)nce or twice a week ; and one may purchase 
 ewes, with lambs at their sides, early in May. 
 Being near to the markets, during the season 
 that meat will keep a week, it is more convenient 
 to deal with the butcher, provided you go to tlte 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 market for the carcass ; for, to purchase joints 
 of meat, loaded with the taxes of the butcher's 
 shop, of his bit of pasture, with the wages of 
 his ser^'ants, the expense of his horses, the 
 expense of keeping his family (one branch of which 
 absolutely demands both gig and tea), and with 
 your due share of his bad debts, to say nothing 
 of his profits, though as small as conscience to- 
 wards his family will permit; to do this, if you have 
 a large family to provide for, and have no means 
 of coining money, whether of paper or of oneial, 
 is to chalk out for yourself a line, direct and 
 smooth, leading from your house to the King'.s 
 Bench ; more especially, if you expose yourself to 
 the numerous and unintentional mistakes which 
 generally arise from booking the joints. Unable 
 to consume a whole carcass, the nearer you come 
 to it the better. The public market is the place 
 to buy meat at; and, if you be too feeble to 
 carry it home yourself, a horse, or a pair of 
 shoulders, is never very difficult to obtain. 
 
 150. Oxen and Cow Feeding. I have 
 before given an account of the manner in which 
 they feed oxen with ears of corn in America. 
 If you fat oxen at manger, you must feed either 
 with ears or you must grind the corn into meal ; 
 for, if they have it in shelled corn, they ruminate 
 and digest only a part of it. I have seen a score 
 of oxen together in a yard, having a manger 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 in a shed to eat the corn in ; hut, having for 
 companions ahout the yard, a troop of hogs fat- 
 ting, and becoming very fat upon the results of the 
 imperfect digestion. Sheep digest the whole 
 completely. I do not, however, recommend this 
 mode of fatting oxen or hogs j I never saw it but 
 once, and that was at a Mr. Tayloh's, in Penn- 
 sylvania. I thought it nasty, and I told him 
 so. If people in America desire to have prize 
 oxen, they finish the fatting of them on 
 corn-meal, which they put into the mangers 
 in the same manner that we put barley-meal ; 
 and the fattest oxen that ever were seen, I 
 believe, in any part of the world, famous old 
 England not excepted, have been killed in Phil- 
 adelphia. There was one killed there, in the 
 winter of 1818, mention of which is, I believe (for 
 I have not at this moment a copy of the book) 
 made in the Year's Residence, which surpassed, 
 in point of fatness, any ox ever seen in England 
 in our times at least. He was fatted by a Quaker, 
 in the Western part of New Jersey j and, they 
 did say, that Ebenezer actually sat up a-nigJtts 
 with him, for the last two months before he was 
 killed. I forget the enormous price that the 
 beef was sold at, after great sums had been 
 made by exhibiting the ox as a show. This ox 
 was fatted upon corn-meal, towards the latter 
 part of the time; and, whoever has a mind for 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE, 
 
 a prize in this way, whethei' for oxen, sheep, or 
 hogSj must make use of corn-ears in the beginning 
 and corn meal at the end j for the hogs can eat 
 the meal, that is to say, they can get at it after 
 they are too heavy to stand, during the time neces- 
 sary to pick up and grind the grain of whole corn. 
 The corn-meal, though more nutritious, is not 
 so heating as barley meal ; and is therefore ex- 
 cellent for cows which give milk for butter. 
 Last winter I kept a horse, four milch rows, 
 ewes as before mentioned, and lambs; and never 
 was there a handful of hay used in my yard. 
 My cows, which it was necessary to keep well, in 
 order to have plenty of butter, and that fine and 
 yellow, and of a sweet flavour, were fed upon 
 corn-meal, a gallon of which was mixed, and well 
 rubbed together, with about a half-a-bushel of 
 fine cut wheat straw, instead of which latter I 
 should have used corn tops if I had had them. 
 Every body was surprised to see such butter made 
 in ivinter. One of the cows was near her calving- 
 time in the month of April ; but we made, upon 
 an average, twenty-four pounds of butter a 
 week ; besides a pretty liberal supply of cream, 
 not made into butter. Our butter was sold, when 
 not wanted, at two-pence a pound higher than the 
 general run of the best butter from the best dairies 
 in the country. 
 
 151. Poultry-feeding. This is a very great 
 
USES TO AVHiCH [Chap. 
 
 matter. There is no grinding, no messings of 
 ])arley-meal to fat poultry with. All you have 
 to do is, to give them a sufficiency of shelled corn 
 tossed down to them in the yard ; and they will 
 all of them, turkeys, geese, ducks, and fowls, be- 
 come as fat as fat can be. We killed, last spring, 
 one single pullet, not of a large breed, out of 
 which we took loose fat weighing three quarters 
 of a pound. We fattened most perfectly and 
 finelv ten turkeys in the same manner; and as 
 to geese and ducks, which fat still easier than 
 either of the former, they will get fat in this 
 manner in a short space of time. If you Avish 
 to have fresh eggs in winter, you need resort to 
 no steeping of barley in beer or in wine, or to 
 giving the hens hempseed, or the seed of nettles, 
 as tlie French do ; nor, to make such a fuss about 
 keeping the hens warm ; give them plenty of 
 corn, whole, and you will have fresh eggs all the 
 winter long. To the very little chickens, or very 
 young turkeys, you must give some in a cracked 
 state ; but, they very soon take it down whole ; 
 and, large as it is, the sparrows will eat it as fast 
 as the fowls ; and, if you be much infested with 
 them, and do not wish to have a numerous 
 and early breed of them next spring, you must 
 feed the poultry close to the door, or stand by 
 them during the meal, which, however, is con- 
 veniently short; for the grain is so large that 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 their craws are filled in a minute. It is Very 
 well known that, in order to have a fat turkey, 
 or even a really fat fowl, we are compelled to 
 resort to cramming. If the farmt>r's wife have 
 a dozen of these, there she sits (for she can trust 
 nobody else to do it), with a leathern apron before 
 her, or rather upon her, with balls of barley meal, 
 rolled into an oblong form, and with a bowl of 
 warm milk, or with some greasy water, taking 
 one turkey out of the coop at a time, upofi her 
 lap, forcing its mouth open with her left hand, 
 putting in the balls with her right, and stroking 
 with her fingers the outside of the neck to make 
 them descend into the craw, every now- and- then 
 pouring down a spoonful of the warm liquid, 
 upon the principle that good victuals deserves 
 good drink : there she sits, if she have two dozen 
 of these animals to cram, two good hours at 
 the least. Sometimes they reject the food, 
 and flutter about, and splash the woman 
 with the contents of the bowl. It is always a 
 disagreeable, troublesome, and nasty job; it 
 takes up a great deal of time ; and yet these 
 things cannot be made sufficiently fat, without 
 this operation, in which, I dare say, twenty thou- 
 sand women are at this very moment (eight 
 o'clock in the morning) engaged, in the counties 
 of Norfolk and Suffolk. If all these women could 
 be brought together, and were to hear me say. 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 and prove, that I could save them all this 
 trouble, they would say " God bless you. Sir ; you 
 " are the best friend (the inventor of tea and 
 " sugar excepted) that ever administered to the 
 " comfort of woman kind." Well, then, this I 
 do for them now ; let their husbands raise some 
 Cobbett's Corn, the leathern aprons may be 
 converted into spatter-dashes for them, the 
 warm milk or greasy water may be given to young 
 pigs, the bowl may be converted into a por- 
 ringer for a boy to eat porridge out of, the coops, 
 well broken up by the pole of the axe, may go to 
 light the fire ; and the four hours saved morning 
 and evening may be employed in spinning and 
 preparing the stuff to make shirts, and shifts, and 
 sheets ; or, which makes less noise, in knitting 
 stockings for the whole family. Every English- 
 man who has been in America, and who does 
 not think that the honour of his country is to be 
 preserved by telling lies about it, will acknow- 
 ledge, that, the pork and the poultry is there the 
 best he ever tasted in his life. I hardly ever saw 
 one so very contemptibly perverse as not to ac- 
 knowledge this ; and here is the sole cause. 
 You will buy a turkey of twelve or fourteen 
 pounds weight for a dollar, that is to say, four 
 and sixpence of our money, while even a woman's 
 wages is not less than from fifteen to twelve dol- 
 lars a month, even if boarded in your house; 
 
IX.J CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 but, you see the thing is got without labour, and 
 therefore it is cheap. 
 
 152. Horse feeding. Corn, shelled or in 
 the ear, is the very best food for horses. They 
 will work longer upon it ; they will go quicker 
 upon it, and they will bear heat and cold upon 
 it better than when fed upon any other food. 
 Those who have seen the horses in America, who 
 have travelled in the American stages, who have 
 observed the life with which the horses trip along 
 under a heat, sometimes, of a hundred and six de- 
 grees, which would absolutely kill every stage coach 
 horse in England, will want nothing to convince 
 them of the excellence of this food, which con- 
 tains so much more of nutrition, in proportion to 
 its bulk, than any other thing that a horse will 
 eat, and that he can eat with safety and conve- 
 nience. In America the corn is too valuable to 
 be the sole food, or any part of the food, of farm 
 horses, whicli are, therefore, in case of hard 
 work, fed with rye, barley, or oats ; but, if horses 
 be wanted to perform extraordinary work, such 
 as fine gig-horses, or wanted to travel far in a day, 
 they are always fed upon corn : in quantity about 
 one- third of what we give in oats. When my horse 
 has, in winter time, little to do, I give him a pint 
 in the morning and a pint at night, mixed with a 
 good parcel of finely cut straw; and three times 
 the quantity is at all times enough. Here, there 
 I 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 is no hay to be dragged out of the rack and to 
 be trampled under foot. If I were a farmer^ even 
 on a doivn farm, having watered meadow at- 
 tached to it, I would never make a handful of 
 hav, that most troublesome, expensive, and most 
 ticklish of all crops. Near great towns, where 
 hay is dear, and where grass is not valuable in 
 proportion, or where the meadows are sure to rot 
 sheep, hay may be made j but, on farms in ge- 
 neral, not one handful can be made profitably. 
 Meadows should he used as pasture ; wholly as 
 pasture. There might possibly be an exception 
 in favour of sainfoin on very poor shallow and hilly 
 land. A little bit of lucerne, near the farm-yard, 
 as summer feed for pigs, horses, and neat cattle ; 
 but, with these exceptions, the corn, with its 
 tops and stalks, used in one shajie or another, 
 most advantageously supplant the hay. Mr. 
 Clark, who has invented the expansion shoe 
 for horses, and who keejis what he calls the 
 V^eterinary Infirmary and Expansion Shoeing 
 Forge, in Hatfield-street, Stamford-street, Black- 
 friars, perceived, when he was in America, 
 how well the horses travelled ivithout shoes ; 
 which led him to think that a great part of the 
 lameness of horses arose in this country, where 
 shoes, from the hardness of the roads, are ren- 
 dered necessary, from the unyielding nature and 
 construction of the shoe. He has, therefore, in- 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 vented a shoe, which expands with the growth 
 of the hoof; and, as far as I am able to judge 
 of the matter, the invention, which is certainly 
 founded in reason, will be found of great value 
 upon experience. I have but just read his state- 
 ment upon the subject; but, though my horse is 
 not a very choice animal, I shall, as soon as con- 
 venient, make a trial of this shoe. Doubtless 
 the American horses may owe something to this 
 circumstance, of being left free with regard to 
 the expansion of the hoof; but I know, from ex- 
 perience, that, with shoes, or without shoes, the 
 corn in the belly is the great hastener and 
 strengthener of the horse, as well as the great 
 preserver of his health. When in Long Island, 
 I lived twenty miles from New York ; I kept, as 
 is the fashion of the farmers in the island, a pair 
 of horses to drive in a light wagon with a pole ; 
 and though this wagon (the nicest thing in this 
 world) is used for all the purposes upon the farm, 
 not excepting stone-cart, and timber- cart (for 
 the sides taken oif it becomes a little timber- 
 carriage) ; though it be very strong, it is, owing 
 to its being made of locust, white oak and hickory 
 wood, in every part, of size so small, a really light 
 affair, not exceeding in weight the common rat- 
 tling English post-chaise. This wagon and pair 
 is kept by every farmer of substance, for car- 
 rying things to market especially ; and, not un- 
 12" 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 frequently (twice every week in the year at the 
 least), taking the wife out a visiting, as before 
 mentioned, to take a comfortable cup of tea and 
 a gossip. My horses went very frequently to New 
 York, and were much about on a par, in point 
 of strength and swiftness, with those of the gene- 
 ral run of my neighbours, who, amidst all their 
 long-fac.ed gravity and absence of ambition and 
 rivalship, have, nevertheless, this one species of 
 folly ; that, in going upon the road, it is looked 
 upon as a sort of slur on one, if another pass him, 
 going in the same direction ; and this folly pre- 
 vails to as great a degree as amongst our break- 
 neck coachmen ; and you will see an old Quaker, 
 whom, to look at, as he sits perched in his wagon, 
 you would think had been cut out of stone a 
 couple of hundred years ago ; or hewed out of a 
 log of wood, with the axe of some of the first 
 settlers. If he hear a rattle behind him, you 
 will see him gently turn his head ; if he be pass- 
 ing a tavern at the time he pays little attention, 
 and refrains from laying his whip upon the 
 " creatures," seeing that he is morally certain 
 that the rattler will stop to take " a grog" at the 
 tavern ; but if mo such invitation present itself, 
 and especially if there be a tavern two or three 
 miles a-head, he begins immediately to make 
 provision against the conseciuences of the impa- 
 tience of his rival, \\ ho, he is aware, will push hira 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 hard, and on they go as fast as they can scam- 
 per, the successful driver talking of the ^^ glo- 
 rious achievement" for a week. It would have 
 been a shame to pass two years and a half 
 amongst these happy people without contracting 
 their habits ; and, therefore, my horses, whether 
 driven by myself, by my sons, or by any body 
 else, had their trials upon the road, not less fre- 
 quently, at any rate, than those of other people ; 
 sometimes we were victorious, and sometimes 
 defeated, but never the latter, without pretend- 
 ing that we did not want to go so fast. Until 
 the year 1819, I used to feed as others did, with 
 oats, barley, rye, and cut chaff; but in that year 
 I could not have these without purchasing ; and 
 I had a great stock of corn which I had pur- 
 chased in the ear. My horses had, tljerefore, 
 nothing but corn for the whole of tliat year, un- 
 til the month of November, when I came awav ; 
 and they beat every pair of horses on the road, 
 till at last nobody that knew tliem ever attempted 
 a rivalship. 1 was now, generally, the driver 
 myself; but it was the corn that forced the horses 
 along, and they frequently went to New York, or, 
 at least, to Brooklin, where the ferry is, in less 
 than two hours, which is twenty miles, besides a 
 mile from my house to the road ; and, as 1 wanted 
 no drink myself, I never stopped to give them even 
 water, unless 1 happened to stand in need of a gos- 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 sip. We well know that we cannot drive a pair 
 of horses, a great deal stouter horses than mine 
 were, twenty miles in two hours in a post chaise, 
 even if the road be as good and level as that in 
 Long Island ; and I never went without more or 
 less of a load. We know, that the boy must stop 
 to water twice in twenty miles, or at least once ; 
 and, indeed, he cannot take you the twenty miles 
 in less than three hours ; and that, even in tem- 
 perate weather, the horses will puff and blow 
 and totter and stumble and quiver in a manner 
 painful to behold. What, then, would such pair 
 of horses, and such post-chaise, do under a sun 
 of from eighty to a hundred degrees of heat ? 
 The corn is mild ; fuller of nutrition than wheat 
 ■itself, quantity for quantity ; it does not heat the 
 animal like rye, barley, or oats ; it does not fill 
 his bodv with bulk, and its mildness does not 
 tempt him to load it with water ', and, we all 
 know what this loading does in adding to the 
 labour or retarding the speed of the horse. It is, 
 however, to be observed here, as in the case of 
 poultry, and neat cattle and sheep, that none of 
 them, or scarcely any of them, take to eating the 
 corn heartily for a day or two. It is very hard, 
 and covered very closely by its skin, and there- 
 fore, does not attract the teeth by its odour, as 
 is the case with regard to grain. Poultry will 
 take it in their bills, and drop it again a little at 
 
IX.J CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 first. Tliey will swallow, for the first day, per- 
 haps, only the small corn or bits of it, that happen 
 to be broken ; but when once they have digested 
 it, they will suffer barley or any other grain, to lie 
 untouched as long as there is a single grain of 
 it within their reach. It is just the same with 
 horses, sheep, and neat cattle ; but pigs, more 
 sagacious than any of the rest, eat it greedily at 
 once, whether they be big or little. I have ob- 
 served, that it needs good teeth. An oldhorse 
 cannot grind it ; at least he cannot grind it well; 
 and, as people frequently purchase horses, which 
 are what they call " aged;" that is to say, 
 when they have lost those teeth, by which you 
 are able to judge precisely of their age, as you 
 are in the case of a sheep^ when people thus 
 purchase horses, or, rather, have them upon trial; 
 and when the horse-dealer, either from want of 
 memory, or from some other accidental cause, 
 gives you a horse as being seven years old, when 
 he may happen to be somewhere between eight- 
 een and twenty-five ; or, to be of any age suffi- 
 cient to have produced the loss or a failure in the 
 strength of his grinders, at a sight of which you 
 cannot very well get ; a very good way to make 
 a trial of the age, is to tender him some corn. If 
 his grinders be not sufficient for the work, he 
 will slobber the corn out of his mouth again ; 
 but if they be good and strong, he will grind it, 
 with a sound that will do your heart good. Gay, 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 the fable-poet, talks of the carrier who " heard 
 his horses grind with pleasure ;" and it is very 
 pleasant to the owner, to hear them grind 
 heartily and nimbly ; but, I think it is still 
 pleasanter to hear the sheep cracking and grind- 
 ing corn. You scarcely hear the hog at it ; but 
 a hundred sheep eating corn, is, I think, the most 
 pleasant music that ever met the ear of man. An 
 old farmer in Hampshire, who was very rich, 
 and whose silly neighbours were persuading him 
 to have his daughter taught music, said " Na ! 
 talk of muzic indeed ; gi' me two flails and a 
 cuckoo." I dare say, that this saying was as 
 old as the English language. The two flails 
 make a very pretty sound at all times. The 
 voice of the harbinger of summer is also delight- 
 ful 5 but, here was the idea of ivealth most aptly 
 associated with that of pleasant sounds. The 
 cuckoo never comes until old May-day ; and, two 
 flails going in the same barn at that time of the 
 year, indicates that there is a good store of grain 
 in the barn at that distance from the preceding 
 harvest, and that, therefore, the farmer is rich. I 
 like two flails and a cuckoo very well, and they 
 have charmed my heart many and many a time, 
 even when I was a little boy ; but, to hear the 
 sheep grind, in their troughs in the field, while the 
 cuckoo is singing over their heads, is as pleasant 
 to hear, and in this case the thought of the dila- 
 pidations of the rats and mice in the barn, do not 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 come athwart the mind to form a draw-back to 
 the pleasure : the corn is safe in the Crib, where 
 it meets your eye fifty times a day, and where it 
 is safe from those vermin, the thought of which 
 diminishes the pleasure arising from the sound of 
 the two flails. 
 
 MAN-FEEDING. 
 
 153. This is so important a part of the sub- 
 ject, that I feel it to be right, as well on ac- 
 count of convenience to the reader, as on that 
 of showing respect for the superior dignity of 
 the feeder, to give to my paragraphs on this 
 part of my subject, a separate head. I have 
 been frequently asked, by persons who have come 
 to see my field of corn, especially by the ladies 
 and gentlemen who pass the greater part of their 
 lives under the roofs of houses, " Will it make 
 bread, Mr. Cobbett ?" " Why, Ma'am, suppose 
 it do not make bread, but makes bacon, pork, 
 beef, mutton, house-lamb, turkeys, geese, ducks, 
 and fowls ?" " Why, to be sure. Sir, that is a great 
 deal." This has generally been pretty nearly the 
 whole of what has passed on such occasions, 
 which, from my perseveringly shutting myself up, 
 and being at work indeed, have very seldom oc- 
 curred. Rousseau says, " Personne n'aime a 
 ^tre questionne, sur tout les enfans." No body 
 likes to be questioned, and particularly children. 
 1 5 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 Now, I have always had a particular dislike to be 
 tiuestioiied J and this dislike has stuck to me 
 throughout the whole of my life. I thought that my 
 ftill accounts, published beforehand, especially as 
 I was assisted with so much indulgence and real 
 liberality by the editors of several of the news- 
 papers, would have prevented my being exposed 
 to showing what might be interpreted into ill-man- 
 ners towards the visitors of my field. I was mis- 
 taken in this ; and when I duly reflect on the 
 great curiosity that was excited, and the great 
 interest at the same time, I can by no means 
 blame the questioning that I happened now and 
 then to meet with ; and have only to express my 
 regret, if any one received a shorter answer, than 
 that which more leisure and more thought on 
 my part might have induced me to give. To 
 return, if the corn will make meat of all sorts to 
 be finally eaten by man ; and if it will give him 
 horses to convey him about ; and all these, with 
 infinitely less trouble, than he can obtain them 
 by the use of any other crop, what more does he 
 want ? But, it will not only do these things, but 
 give him a great variety of most excellent food, 
 the most convenient, and the most healthy that 
 can be found, to go, directly, into his own mouth 
 and down his own throat, without any interven- 
 tion, other than that of the culinary process. 
 There are a great variety of ways, designated by 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 an equal number of names, in which corn is used 
 as food for man. These are as follows : Grken 
 
 EARS, SUPPAWN, JMUSH, HoMANV, SaMP, PltD- 
 
 DiNGs, Cakes, Bread; to which may be added 
 Beer. I shall speak of each of these except the 
 last under different heads, and shall give as plain 
 instructions relative to each as it is in my power 
 to give, at the risk of the reader, when he has 
 heard me out, exclaiming : " Surely this man 
 " was born and bred in a kitchen, and never 
 " did any thing but cook in the whole course of 
 " his life.'' To do justice to myself, however, 
 in this respect, I must observe, that I am not so 
 much the actor here as the historian ; that I 
 am indebted to others for the _§'reater part of 
 my matter, particularly to those " indispensable 
 and vahiable members of civil society," the ladies. 
 154. Green Ears. I have said a good deal 
 about these ears, as used by the Israelites ; but, 
 I must here give minute instructions with regard 
 to the manner of cooking and eating them. 
 Early in the month of September, or late in 
 August, if you turn aside, or rather open with 
 your fingers, the green husks of the ear, vou will 
 find the grain, apparently bursting with milk. 
 This milk afterwards becomes meal, as is the case 
 with wheat, rye, and other grain. Towards the 
 top of the ear, where the grains are formed last, 
 they will not be arrived quite at their full milky 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 state. Having ascertained the state of one ear, 
 you need not open the husks of the rest ; the feel 
 of them on the outside will soon instruct you as to 
 their state of forwardness. You strip the ear oft 
 from the stalk by a tear down war dj and you carry 
 a parcel in to be eaten. You now take off the 
 liusks, and, when you have done that, there are 
 two ways of proceeding in the cookery; roast- 
 ing and Ifoiling. Roasted ears, such as those 
 mentioned in Leviticus, are certainly the greatest 
 delicacy that ever came in contact with the 
 jndate of man. In America, where they burn 
 wood upon the hearth, they contrive to have a 
 bright fire, with a parcel of live wood coals on the 
 hearth ; they lay something of iron across the 
 two hand-irons which are used in the fire-place ; 
 sweep the ashes up clean, and then they take 
 the ears of corn aird set them up along in a row, 
 facing the fire, and leaning gently against the 
 bar which they have put across. When one side 
 is brown, you turn the other side towards the 
 fire ; or, rather, you turn them round gradually 
 until the whole be brown ; and when the whole of 
 the grains be brown, you lay them in a dish, and 
 put them upon the table. These are so many 
 little bags of roasted milk, the sweetest that can 
 be imagined ; or, rather, are of the most delightful 
 taste. You leave a little tail of the ear, two 
 inches long, or thereabouts, to turn it and 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 handle it by. You take a thin piece of butter 
 upon a knife, which will cling to the knife on 
 one side, while you gently rub it over the ear 
 from the other side. Thus the ear is buttered ; 
 then you take a little salt, according to your 
 fancy, and sprinkle it over the ear ; you then 
 take the tail of the ear in one hand, and the 
 point of the ear in the other hand, and bite the 
 grains off the cobb. I need hardly say, that 
 this must be done with the fore teeth, and that 
 those who have none must be content to live 
 without green ears ; for, as to taking the grains 
 off with a knife, they are too deeply planted to 
 admit of that ; and if you attempt cutting, you 
 will cut cobb and all. When you have finished 
 one ear, you lay the cobb aside and go to an- 
 other. No wonder that this was ordered to be 
 a meat-offering of the first-fruits unto the Lord : 
 for it is the most savoury, the most delightful, 
 thing that ever was eaten by man. 1 defy all 
 the arts of French cookery, upon which so many 
 volumes have been written, to produce any 
 thing so delightful to the palate as this. So much 
 for the roasting ears j and now for the boiled, 
 which is the general mode of cooking ; which is 
 not quite productive of so delicate a thing to 
 taste ; but, which is productive certainly of the 
 next delicate thing in the world. You gather 
 the ears, and husk them, as before mentioned ; 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 put them into a pot of hot water, and boil them 
 for about twenty minutes ; then take them out 
 into a dish, put them upon the table, as in the 
 other case, and proceed with the butter and the 
 salt and the biting oif from the cobb, as before. 
 Common people, in America, boil them with 
 fat pork ; and do not use any butter at all, the 
 pork having communicated to them a sufficiency 
 of fat. The Israelites were commanded to smear 
 the roasted ears over with oi/, their countrv being 
 a little too warm to make a bit of butter stick 
 upon a knife ; for this reason too, in most 
 cases, my friends the Yankees content them- 
 selves with the fat imbibed from the pork, which, 
 the reader will please to observe, is not potatoe- 
 fed stuff from Waterford, nor blood-and-gar- 
 bage-fed stuff from the neighbourhood of the 
 slaughter-houses in and about the Wen ; but solid 
 as a rock, and sweet as a violet ; a thing which 
 the most delicate might eat with pleasure, if 
 thinly spread upon bread in the place of butter. 
 Now, contemplate for a moment the use, the 
 value, of being furnished thus, not with mere 
 garden-stuff, at this time of the year, when the 
 old crop is gone, and the new crop is not 
 come. These green ears are bread, and when 
 boiled are used as such, nobody ever tJiiaking 
 of bread to eat with meat, or to eat with tea at 
 breakfast, or at night, if they have green ears of 
 
JX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 corn. I remember that, under that day of the 
 month in which I mentioned, in my " Year's 
 Residence," that we had begun upon our green 
 ears, I said, " We shan't starve now." I have 
 mentioned before that I had but five rods of ground 
 planted with corn, and I know that seven of us, 
 six men and a woman, had no other bread for 
 six weeks ; and no otlier meat than " prime 
 pork ;" and no other victuals besides a thumping 
 apple pudding every day. Think of seven per- 
 sons, getting their liread for six weeks from five 
 rods of ground ; and not one of the seven who 
 had not full as good an appetite as falls to the 
 lot of the generality of men. The plat was, in- 
 deed, extraordinarily productive ; and I think it 
 was equal to fifteen rods of the general crops in 
 the fields. But, it was what any man may have 
 over one whole field, and it was no more than 
 what every labouring man may have in his garden 
 every vear of his life, if he have a garden contain- 
 ing five or six rods of grovnid. The ears ripen 
 by degrees. There are always some nmch 
 earlier than the rest : there are ears to be found 
 in a milky state during a space of six weeks, or 
 thereabouts. They grow, indeed, leather harder 
 towards the latter end of the six weeks ; but 
 hungry people like them the better for this, as 
 they have more substance in them, and approach 
 nearer to meal and bread. Any thing oiyrinders 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 will dispose even of these with great ultimate advan - 
 tage. Here, then, is no flatulentstuff,suchas beans, 
 pease, cabbages, and the like, which are nothing 
 without meat, and generally without butter too. 
 Many a meal have I made upon green ears alone ; 
 and many a hundred thousand meals are made 
 every year in the same manner by people in 
 America, who have always heaps of meat at their 
 command, lliey keep gathering the green ears 
 till the grain is so hard as to resist the thumb- 
 nail ; and then they resort to the various states 
 of the grindings of the corn of the last year. In 
 the culinary process, there are none of those 
 cuUings and pickings and choosings and reject- 
 ings and washings and dabblings and old women 
 putting on their spectacles to save the caterpillars 
 from being boiled alive ; there are none of those 
 peelings and washings as in the case of potatoes 
 and turnips, and digging into the sides with the 
 knife for the eyes, the maggots and the worms, 
 and flinging away about half the root, in order 
 to secure the worst part of it, which is in the 
 middle ; none of those squeezings and mashings 
 and choppings before the worthless mess can be 
 got upon the table ; nor are there wanted any 
 of that tribe of boilers, of skillets, and saucepans, 
 and stewpans and kettles, and a whole heap of 
 stuff, which, in a pretty large house, would, if 
 they were all collected together, after being lugged 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 out from their divers shelves and holes and cor- 
 ners, fill a dung-cart. Nature has furnished this 
 valuable production with so complete a covering, 
 that washings from the purest water cannot add 
 to its cleanness. The husk being stripped off, 
 it is at once ready for the pot. A mess of pease 
 costs three times its real worth in the gathering 
 and shelling; besides, keeping the dinner back, 
 one of the greatest sins ever committed by the lazy 
 and thoughless part of the female kind. Where 
 the dinner is not ready at the proper time, in 
 that house there is no regularity ; and no aifairs, 
 either of the gentle or simple, can have any thing 
 like certainty belonging to them. Here the thing 
 is ready of itself; no going to the mill for the 
 poor man during these six weeks ; no trudging 
 about for the labourer of a Sunday morning to 
 get his flour from the mill ; or, nine times out 
 of ten, from the merciless chandler's shop, where 
 nine times out of ten he has it " booked," and 
 where he meets nine'times out of ten with a ven- 
 dor and booker, with less mercy in the heart than 
 the devil has in his, even according to the worst 
 accounts that we have of the disposition of that 
 infernal sovereign. The green ears are so ready 
 to the hand, so carefully preserved by nature from 
 all sorts of dirt and filth, that we can hardly see 
 the possibility of dirt being got upon them, even 
 by the unfortunate Irish, who have neither forks 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 nor knives, nor plates nor spoons, nor any thing 
 but a pot in whicli they ])oil the potatoes, and 
 from which they trundle them out upon a board, 
 there to be peeled by hands, with which soap 
 has never come in contact. If they can but get 
 clean water into their pot, and some more water 
 to wash tlie board with, here they may have a 
 clean meal in spite of those who plunder them 
 under pretence of making them free. 
 
 155. SupPAVVN. This is neither more nor 
 less than pmTidfje ; that is to say, boiling milk, 
 broth, or water, thickened with corn-flour, in the 
 same way that people in the South of England 
 tlricken them with wheat-flour, and that people 
 in the North of England thicken them with oat- 
 meal. Put into water, this is a breakfast, or sup- 
 per, or dinner for little children ; put into milk 
 or broth, it is the same for grown people ; and 
 here 1 should observe, that, the use of corn- 
 meal or flour in this way or in some other, is 
 invariably recommended by physcians, in case of 
 disorders arising from bad digestion. With milk 
 or broth it is a good strong meal, and quite suf- 
 ficient as breakfast or supper for man to work 
 upon. There ought to be for every working man 
 one good meal of meat in a day. If he be at 
 work at a distance from home, and especially in 
 winter time, for supper it is the most con- 
 venient ; and then, he ought to have bread and a 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 piece of cheese or meat to eat at his work in the 
 middle of the day, besides having meat for sup- 
 per. When at home, or near home, porridge 
 with milk or broth, and corn-flour, is quite suf- 
 ficient for two of the meals. Half a pound of 
 meal ; nay, a quarter of a pound, swelling up 
 as it does, is sufficient for one man for one meal; 
 and the cost of this, at this time, the corn being 
 brought from America, with a heavy duty upon 
 it, is much about one fartliing. A half-penny- 
 Avorth of corn-flour, finely dressed, is quite suf- 
 ficient for two meals a day for a working man, if 
 it be mixed up with milk or good fat broth. I vvil! 
 here relate, how I now manage in my farm-hous ?, 
 where I have to board eight young men and a boy. 
 besides myself, and, sometimes, a helper or two. 
 Let us begin with the dinner ; for that is the basis 
 on which we proceed. We have a little cauldron 
 or boiler hung like a brewing copper, in which 
 there is boiled as much of the very best mutton that 
 I can purchase as the whole can eat for dinner ; 
 there being no limit as to quantity, and there 
 being always a piece left to be cold, in case 
 a stranger should drop in. The meat, toge- 
 ther with dumplings, are put upon the table 
 every day,, or rather upon both tables, just five 
 minutes before twelve, and when the clock strikes, 
 we all go to dinner. When the meat is taken 
 up, the whole of the broth, into which a parcel 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 of turnips, onions, and herbs have been put 
 during the time the meat has been boiling, is 
 taken out with a ladle and put into a clean thing 
 which I must now fully describe. It is made in 
 the shape of the iron-boiler or cauldron ; but its 
 dimensions are much smaller, and it is flat at the 
 bottom, and has a lid to cover it closely and two 
 handles to lift it by. The broth remains in this 
 until the next morning ; clean water is then put 
 into the cauldron, which soon boils. The tin thing 
 is put into the cauldron along with, or directly 
 after, the water, but there must not be so much 
 water as to be quite so high up as the rim of 
 the tin thing. The water boils first, but the 
 heat which it gives to the broth on the sides 
 and on the bottom, quickly makes the broth boil. 
 In the mean while, the meal is diluted in a part 
 of tlie broth which has been kejjt back for the pur- 
 pose. We breakfast at eight precisely j and, a few 
 minutes before that time, the rest of the broth and 
 diluted meal are poured into the tin thing, which 
 almost immediately boils again. It is well stir- 
 red here, kept boiling for a few minutes, receives 
 three or four spoonfuls of salt, and the porridge 
 is ready. Just before the men come in, the 
 maid lifts out the tin thing, carries it and puts 
 it down upon the breakfast tal)le, and, with a 
 ladle, fills the porringers, in number equal to 
 that of the men, which porringers, each with its 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 spoon, have been placed upon the table-cloth half 
 an hour before ', this is a warm, a hearty, and a 
 most wholesome breakfast, sufficient for any man, 
 let his work be what it may, and lasts him well 
 where his full meal of good meat is only at four 
 hour's distance. Here are no grimy porridge- 
 pots to be lugged backwards and forwards 
 to a fire place, and hung upon cranes or 
 chains ; and causing the gowns, the aprons, 
 and the petticoats, of the maids to be set fire 
 to, or, at the least, to be blacked over with the 
 pots. This is the cleverest thing of the kind 
 that I ever saw in my life.; but by no means any 
 invention of mine, I having learnt it from a la- 
 bourer, who was brought up in a dairy country, 
 where they make use of such things to heat their 
 milk in the making of their cheese ; and as there 
 was neither law nor proclamation against it, I 
 took the liberty to apply it to the making of por- 
 ridge, for which purpose I strongly recommend 
 it to all farmers throughout the^ country, and to 
 every body else who has a parcel of men and 
 boys to feed. The water which remains in the 
 cauldron is ready, the moment the tin thing is 
 taken out, for washing up the milk things and 
 for washing the spoons and porringers ; so that 
 here, not only is the breakfast thus begun, con- 
 tinued, and ended, but the whole of the other 
 morning work is done up clean, and the cauldron 
 
USES TO ^^■HICH [Chap. 
 
 is filled again for the cooking of tiie dinner. 
 Thus we get over two meals of the day without 
 bread; and one of them (for porridge requires 
 none) without beer. The bread is a ceremonious 
 aifair, and occupies a great deal of time, and 
 ca^nnot he had at a miniUe's warning j and the 
 beer, owing to the duties on the malt, is really 
 expensive^ for a quart of porridge, as good as ever 
 was eaten by man, and forming a good and sub- 
 stantial meal, does not cost a quarter part so 
 jnuch as a quart of even poor small beer. At 
 dinner the men have a pint of beer apiece in this 
 winter time, and they have the like at supper, 
 with as much bread and cheese as they choose 
 to eat, the cheese being, if I can jjossibly have it 
 so, made from the milk of my own cows, and is 
 what is commonly called skim-cheese ; besides 
 this, the men have three shillings a week each in 
 money; it costs them about fourpence a week for 
 washing, and the rest they may keep or lay out 
 in clothes. And, this observe, is for the six 
 months of the ivinter. What, then, does that 
 wriggling reptile Bott Smith, of Liverpool, de- 
 serve, for representing me as a niggardly master, 
 while the unfeeling reptile knows that there are 
 hundreds of thousands of miserable manufacturers 
 in the North, who would deem it happiness to be 
 able to blow their bodies out with scab-creating 
 oatmeal and water? Deserve! the indignant 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 reader will exclaim ; he deserves to be crushed 
 by the foot of one of these well-fed men, and to 
 have the stinking remains of him flung upon the 
 dirtiest dunghill in the yard. Just in this same 
 manner, on precisely the same diet, drink and 
 all, I live myself, except that, instead of bread 
 and cheese for supper, I have at supper time 
 (exactly six o'clock), a pint of cold skim milk 
 and a bit of bread, which I take in the Yorkshire 
 fashion (which I learned in the army), " bite and 
 mp ;" that is to say, take a bit of bread in one 
 hand, and the pint of milk, in a mug, in the 
 other, bite off a mouthful of bread, give it a twist 
 or two, and then take a sup of milk j which is a 
 great deal better than soaking the bread in the 
 milk; because the teeth separate the bread, 
 and cause it to receive, in every part, its due 
 proportion of milk. The men would not change 
 suppers with me if they had their choice. I do, 
 indeed, go home to Kensington once a week ; 
 but there I make no change in my mode of liv- 
 ing, except, perhaps, as to the dinner ; and, then, 
 I take whatever sort of meat I find, never eating 
 any garden stuff at all, except the onions and the 
 herbs in the porridge. Now, is there a man on 
 earth who sits at a table, on an average, so many 
 hours in the day as I do ? . I do not believe that 
 there is ; and I say it, not with pride, but with 
 gratitude, that I do not believe that the whole 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 world contains a man who is more constantly 
 blessed with health than I am. In winter, I go 
 to bed at nine, and I rise, if I do not oversleep 
 myself, at four, or between four and five. I have 
 always a clear head ; I am ready to take the pen, 
 or to begin dictating, the moment 1 have lighted 
 the fire, or it has been lighted for me ; and, ge- 
 nerally speaking, I am seldom more than five 
 minutes in bed before I am asleep. Take such 
 stuff" as this, and put it into a Secretary of State, 
 or Prime Minister, and think of the effect it 
 would produce ! 
 
 156. Mush. — This is not a word to squall out 
 over a piano-forte ; but, it is a very good word, 
 and a real English word, though Johtmson has 
 left it, as he has many other good words, out of 
 his Dictionary. It means this ; you put some 
 water or milk into a pot, and bring it to 
 boil, you then let the flour or meal out of one 
 hand gently into the milk or water, keeping- 
 stirring with the other, until you have got it into 
 a pretty stiff" state, after which, you let it stand 
 ten minutes, or a quarter of an hour, or less, or 
 even only one minute, and then take it out, and 
 put it into a dish or bowl. This sort of half 
 pudding half porridge you eat either hot or cold, 
 with a little salt or without it. It is frequently 
 eaten unaccompanied with any liquid matter ; 
 but the genaral way is to have a porringer of 
 
]X.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 inilk, and, taking off a lump of the mush at the 
 time, and putting it into the milk, you take up 
 a spoonful at a time, having a little milk along 
 with it ; and this is called mush and milk. But, 
 here is a most excellent pudding, even if there 
 be no milk to eat with it, that is to say, if it be 
 made originally with milk ; and, if there be no 
 milk to be had, as must be generally the case at 
 the houses of the labourers, here is a very good 
 substitute for bread, whether you take it cold or 
 hot. It is not, like the miserable potatoe, a 
 thing that turns immediately to water ; nor is it 
 like a pudding made ol flour and water ^ v.iiich is 
 hard, closely clung together, heavy upon the 
 stomaeh, indigestible, and of course unwhole- 
 some, whence comes the old saying, " Cold 
 pudding to settle your love;" that is to say, to 
 cool a fellow exceedingly, if not to extinguish 
 the source of his passions altogether. The mnsh, 
 so far from being hard and lumpy when cold, is 
 quite light, very much puffed up ; and tliis is the 
 very thing, made of water, and not of milk, 
 which physicians recommend to all persons, who 
 from over eating, over drinking, or any other 
 cause, have feeble stomachs. The corn-meal and 
 flour is wholesome, more so than wheat flour, ia 
 all its states or manners of cooking ; but, this is 
 the manner the most in vogue throughout the 
 United States of America ; and, if a poor man's 
 
 K 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 family had plenty of this, even without the 
 milk, he never ought to regret the absence of 
 bread. One great convenience Ijelonging to the 
 mush is, that you may eat it cold, and it most 
 frequently is eaten cold. It may be carried by 
 the workman to the field in a little tin or pewter 
 thing. It is, in fact, moist bread ; habit soon makes 
 it as pleasant and even pleasanter than bread. You 
 cannot make mush of wheat-meal nor of oat-meal. 
 It is better to make it of meal that has nothing 
 but the very coarse bran taken out of it, than it 
 is to make it of the flour ; because, If finely 
 dressed, the mush would be more like dovfjh : 
 the coarser it is, the better it is, so that the large 
 Ijran is just taken out. What a great thing is 
 here, then, for all classes of persons, and par- 
 ticularly for the labourer ! There may be bread 
 made every day ; you may have it hot or have it 
 cold. There is more nutrition than you can get 
 out of the same quantity of wheat meal ; and, 
 does not every one know, how many of those 
 ingenious and laborious creatures, who make all 
 the fine things that decorate our shops, live all 
 the year round upon the meal of oats put into 
 water ! This oatmeal is, at this moment that 
 I am writing (loth November), sold in London at 
 tivelve shillings for the fifty- six pounds; and, 
 corn meal, even with the high duty of thirteen 
 shillings and nine pence a quarter on the corn, 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 might now be sold very well at seven shillincjs for 
 the fifty-six pounds. There is no occasion to wait 
 till our own crops come : there is plenty to be 
 had from America ; and plenty from Canada, 
 too, without any duty that can ever be higher 
 than half a crown a quarter. So that we may 
 begin, in a few months' time, to live pretty nearlv 
 as well, as to the matter of bread, as the Ame- 
 ricans themselves ; except that, \hejiist and equi- 
 table owners of the land and fillers of the seats, 
 will make us pay a tax upon our mush, as they 
 do now a tax upon our bread. It is in this 
 state in particular, that the corn is so great a 
 blessing as food for man : it is thus used in 
 every house in the country : some have not the 
 convenience of making it into bread ; some may 
 not use it in porridge ; homany and samp are in 
 use in some parts of the country and not in 
 others ; but miish is used in every house, whether 
 the owner be the richest or the poorest man in 
 the country. It is eaten at the best tables, 
 and that, almost every day : some like it hot, 
 some cold, some with milk, some to slice it 
 down, and eat it with meat ; some like it best 
 made with water, others with milk ; but all like 
 it in one way or another ; and my belief is that 
 the corn, even used in this one single manner, 
 does more, as food for man, than all the wheat 
 that is groivn in the country, though the flour 
 K 2 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 from that wheat is well known to 1)6 the best in 
 the world. Will our labouring ])eople, then, still 
 insist upon lapping up tea-water, expensive vil- 
 lanous tea-water, sweetened with the not less 
 expensive result of the sv/eating bodies, the 
 aching limbs, and the bleeding backs of the 
 Africans ? will they still insist upon blowing 
 themselves out with this costly stuff, which all 
 the world knows has no nutrition in it ? will they 
 insist upon squandering their earnings away on 
 the filthy and heel-swelling potatoes ; when they 
 can here, at a tenth part of the expense, or 
 tliereabouts, without even an oven, and without 
 any plaguing utensil; will they continue to do this, 
 in spite of reason ; in spite of the example of a 
 nation of the best livers in the world; in spite of 
 their own interest and their health ; having nothing 
 to plead ia their defence, except the well-known 
 and not very rare fact, that they never have 
 eaten any of these things ? People, in observing 
 upon conduct like this, generally call it preju- 
 dice ; a very pretty word to supply the place of 
 tvUfulness, obstinacy, ^^e^rer^ewe^^, and brutal 
 disregard of the dictates of reason. They have 
 Vi prejudice against it. It unfortunately happens 
 that they never have a prejudice against any 
 food or drink, to indulge in which is ruinous. 
 I speak of the middle class as well as of the 
 labourers ; for as to the rich, they can squander 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 away with impunity ; but in the other classes it 
 is not only foolish, but insolent, and not onlv 
 insolent, but cviminal, especially in tlie head of a 
 family, to permit this prejudice, or rather this 
 stupid and insolent perverseness, to deprive him 
 of the means of keepuig his family well fed and 
 in health, instead of being exposed to all the 
 ailments arising from poverty of blood, which is 
 occasioned by poverty of living ; and to prevent 
 him also, in many cases, from making that 
 due future provision for his family, which, if he 
 be able, it is his duty to make. Only think of 
 the conduct, only think of the criminal perverse- 
 ness of the mother of a family, when the father is 
 compelled to toil in one way or anotlier from 
 morning till night ; only think of such a mother, 
 insisting upon expending a penny upon tea slops, 
 which have no nutrition in them ; or a ])en!iy on 
 a pound of potatoes, " I do love a mealy potatoe, 
 ma'am," which has oidy a tenth part of nutri- 
 tious matter in it ; that is to say, which has 
 only one pound of nutritious matter out of ten. 
 Only think of such a mother 3 and think still 
 more of the cowardly and the criminal con- 
 duct of the father, that thus suffers her to 
 waste his substancL", and injure his children j and 
 all because, she does love a "mealy potatoe" 
 in her heart, and because she has such a '•'preju- 
 dice " against any sort of meal or flour, that does 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 not proceed from wheat! But thinking about 
 such a mother is not all that a husband has to 
 do. If reasoning, if persuasion, if enough to con- 
 vince perverseness itself; if means of this sort be 
 tried in vain (and they ought to be tried till all 
 hope has expired), more effectual means ought to 
 be resorted to; and the only means in so desperate 
 a case is that of keeping a tight hand upon the 
 purse-stnngs, which is, indeed, the only remedy ; 
 complete in all its effect?, without noise and 
 without any one disagreeable consequence. With 
 the absence of the means of squandering, the 
 ^^ jwejiidice" is very apt to grow feebler and 
 feebler every day ; and, in this case, the porridge 
 and the mush have all their sweetness, all their 
 utility, and all the saving of labour and expense, 
 at the end of about a month, generally speaking, 
 though, in certain cases, it might last longer. 
 Upon the disappearance of the ^'prejudice" not 
 only might the purse strings be slackened, but 
 that would be accompanied by the agreeable dis- 
 covery that porridge and mush had made a con- 
 siderable addition to the contents. I must, injus- 
 tice to the party, observe, that I do not here speak 
 con amore, as the Italians call it; for my wife 
 has always been ready, not only to imitate every 
 good piece of management of this sort that she 
 saw in America, but has actually made great 
 improvements in two or three instances upon that 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 management, of two of which instances I shall have 
 to speak bv-and-bye. She does not, indeed, abstain 
 from the use of tea and sugar, which I am very 
 sorry for on her own account ; for the expense, 
 the reader must needs think, cannot be an ob- 
 ject with me. But she has never had any pre^ 
 judice about any of the things proceeding from 
 corn. She adopted the several modes of using 
 it immediately upon seeing them ; and never 
 cried up old England on account of its wheat 
 flour, as is the case with scores of perverse wo- 
 men whose husbands take them to America, 
 and who, owing to the perverseness and everlast- 
 ing vvorryings of their wives, come back and 
 starve upon the spot from whence they started. 
 But is it possible that we are to be told, or that 
 we are to think for a moment, that labouring 
 people in England, who do not see a pound of 
 meat from month's end to month's end, will turn 
 up their noses at food which is seen upon the 
 tables of the most opulent people in the best fed 
 country in the world ? O no 1 this will not be be- 
 lieved ; there will be for a while a little contest 
 between the comfortable cup of tea, and the mess 
 of potatoes on one side, and the porridge and 
 mush on the other; but the contest will not last 
 long ; the love of a bellyful and the love of ease, 
 for here the two are combined, will soon set 
 . aside the cups and saucers and the potatoe-pot, 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 the boil of which is eternal ; and I shall, I dare say, 
 tramp about the country and see scores of fami- 
 lies of round-faced children stufSng away upon 
 one or the other of these articles of food. 
 
 157. HoMANY. I never saw, that I know of, 
 any homany ; and it may, for ought I know, be 
 the same thing as isjush. It is the general mode 
 of using the corn-meal in the southern part of 
 the United States, where it is, generally, the sole 
 food of the negroes, and invariably part of the 
 food of the planter and his family, and a great 
 part of it too. The weekly allowance to a work- 
 ing negro, is ten pounds of the jiint-corn, or 
 twelve pounds of the golden-corn. Judge, then, 
 what a nutritious thing this must be, for twelve 
 pounds of it to be sufficient to maintain a working 
 man for seven days: and let it not be supposed 
 the negroes are starved, or even stinted ; for it is 
 the owner's interest to keep his slave well, as much 
 as it is our interest to keep our horses or oxen 
 well. A common working slave is worth from a 
 hvndred to two hundred pounds ; not only his 
 strength, therefore, but his health is a great ob- 
 ject M'ith liis owner ; and we may be well assured, 
 that if a negro could do more work, or be caused 
 to live longer, or in better health, by any other 
 sort of food, he would not live long upon ho- 
 many; something else would soon be discovered; 
 resort would be had to flesh or to some other 
 
JX.] CORX IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 thing that would give the slave better health 
 and more strength. All the blacks on the 
 continent of America, and in the West Indies, 
 are fed upon corn in some one or other of the 
 modifications ; and every West Indian, or Ameri- 
 can, will tell you, that tobacco, cotton, coffee, or 
 sugar, could not be raised to any thing like the 
 extent they now are, without the food that pro- 
 ceeds from corn. 
 
 158. SaxMP. This, though not in such com- 
 inon use as porridge and rausli, is verv much used. 
 The corn is thumped (I do not know by what pro- 
 cess), as we do oats, to get the skin off it. This is 
 put into a pot with pork, or any other meat, and 
 boiled, just in the same manner as is followed by 
 the people in the country in the making of pea- 
 porridge. Thev soak the pease over night, and 
 boil them with the meat the next day, and eat the 
 porridge, pea-shells and all. This samp is a food 
 vastly superior to the pea ; all the pulse kinds 
 are flatulent in their consequence; and it is very 
 well known that pease and beans, kidney-beans, 
 lentiles, tares, and, in short, all the pulse kind, if 
 eaten, by man or brute, to any thing approach- 
 ing to excess, are always dangerous, and fre- 
 quently kill. I knew a farmer who was killed by 
 eating Windsor beans along with his men, in the 
 harvest field ; and 1 had a man who died almost 
 K 5 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 instantly from the eating of kidney-beans, cooked 
 in their ripe and dry state. There is nothing of 
 this sort belonging to the produce of the corn- 
 plant; and the samp is a great deal more nutritious 
 as well as more wholesomCj than pea-porridge. 
 \\^hen samp is to be made, meat must be boiled 
 wththe cracked corn; audit mustbe well boiled. 
 American Pork is the meat in general ; but 
 the dish might be made delightful to the most 
 delicate palate, by boiling the skinned corn with 
 a scrag of mutton, or a piece of lean beef; far 
 preferable to any thing that we have ])ut upon 
 the best tables luider the name of pea-soup ; 
 though the j)ease be split, and though the soup 
 be strained ; for straining may take place equally 
 well in the case with Samp, which is corn-soup 
 instead of pea-soup. There must be no skins 
 in the Samp, which is not to be merely cracked, 
 but the skins beaten off in the same manner 
 as the Dutch and the Americans beat the shells 
 off from buck-wheat, and as the people in the 
 North of England and in Scotland beat off the 
 shells of oats before they are ground into oat- 
 meal. I saw a windmill in Lancashire, in which 
 I was surprised to see great quantities of the 
 piths of oats cleared from the shell. What 
 they call pearl barley is, I suppose, prepared by 
 the same sort of process. I was first enlightened \, 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 my mind made its first march, m this ajfifair, on 
 board of a little ship, called the Mary, going 
 from Havre de Grace to New York, in the 
 year 1792 (Good God I have I been writing ever 
 since that time !) ; during which voyage, which 
 lasted five or six and forty days, part of Septem- 
 ber, the whole of October, and part of Novem- 
 ber, the *' Good Sloop Mary," burthen ninety 
 tons, or thereabouts, was tossed about upon the 
 ocean, like a cork. x\ll the fowls were dead, in 
 somewhat the way of Tolgol's sheep. It could 
 not be called natural AedAh, indeed, for they were 
 washed to death by the spray and the waves. 
 But, at any rate, they almost all fell to the lot of 
 the sailors. The turkeys did not last a week ; 
 the geese got very poor, in spite of Corn ; 
 we had no pigs ; and some Rouen ducks were 
 the only things that gave us any fresh meat at all 
 during this long and most stormy voyage. There 
 was a Frenchman on board, named Lachaine, 
 who, together with me and my wife, formed 
 the passengers. The Captain, who was a 
 Yankee, and whose name was Grinnell, and 
 who was a most clever, cheerful, and obliging 
 fellow, resorted to all the resources within his 
 reach to furnish us with something that we could 
 eat ; and especially my wife, who, from her 
 peculiar situation, required something other than 
 mere pork and biscuit. One day, he said, " I 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 wish we could get some Samp ;" but to have 
 samp, the skins of the grains of the corn must 
 be beaten off. Full of contrivances, as all 
 Yankees are, he put some corn into the bottom 
 of a barrel, I think it was, and thumped it with 
 a hand-spike; all done in a very clean manner; 
 and made us some samp ; the eating of which 
 samp, gave rise to a dispute upon a question re- 
 lating to t\\e fair sex, or, as the Irish call them, to 
 the " Jieave7ihj part of the creation ;" the nature 
 and result of which dispute I am induced to give 
 an account of here, for the benefit of both sexes ; 
 and particularly for the benefit of young men. 
 Samp has ascribed to it a quality which has a 
 tendency to produce effects precisely the opj^o- 
 site of those which are aimed at in tlie doctrines 
 and precepts of Parson Malthus, Peter 
 TniMiii.E and Carlile. This may be non- 
 sense, as far as I know, but this is what people 
 say. The Frenchman, notwithstanding his na- 
 tional conceit and pride on this subject of 
 cookery, was delighted with the Samp, which 
 he liked not for his own sake, but because his 
 intended at New York was so very fond of it. 
 \^'^hen a Frenchman is in love, or when he con- 
 ceits that any girl is in love with him, he takes 
 care to tell all the world of it ; and this Frcncli- 
 man had been bragging to ns, from the first mo- 
 ment we saw him, about this intended at New 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 York, who and whose sister were milliners, living 
 and boarding at the house of aMADAME L'Epine, 
 a Yankee woman, who had married a Frenchman. 
 He had told us forty times over, that he was to 
 be married upon his arrival; that every thing was 
 prepared for the nuptials ; he showed my wife 
 trinkets and dresses that he was taking out for 
 the occasion ; he had, besides, in most elegant and 
 curious wrought cages, evei'y species of singing 
 bird known in Europe, not excepting the fau~ 
 rette, which we have not in England, and the 
 nightingale, so very difficult to keep in a tame 
 state. He had all, of full age and plumage, ex- 
 cept the bullfinch ; and not to be deficient even 
 here, he had a nest of young bullfinches, half 
 fledged. He had not excepted even the sparrow, 
 on account, I suppose, not so much for its 
 delightful song, as for its being poetically 
 deemed emblematical of ardour in the affairs of 
 love. He showed us, or at least showed my 
 wife, letters from his intended, expressive of senti- 
 ments at Avhich scarcely any reader will be at 
 a loss pretty accurately to guess. When we 
 came to feast upon the scmqj, we had Miss Hicks 
 served up to us again, piping hot, and J, really 
 out of compassion forLACHAiNE, looking him very 
 j-eriously in the face, said, " But, you don't think 
 that she will wait for you, do vou ?" He was a very 
 good-humoured man ; he was a furrier, who got 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 skills down from Canada, and carried on a traffic 
 with France. He was easy in his circumstances, 
 but he was on the wrong side of thirty ; and we 
 understood that the girl was only about twenty. 
 When I asked him the question, the spoon ahnost 
 dropped from his hand, and his colpur grew fairly 
 red with anger. ^Vhereupon I perceived that the 
 business was serious; that he was really far gone ; 
 and, still preserving a serious and firm tone, I in- 
 sisted that it was unreasonable to expect that a 
 Yankee girl should wait, not only seven months, 
 but seven days after she was in the mind. He 
 had learned that I had been married only six 
 months before, that my wife was then only 
 eighteen and a half; and that she had been ab- 
 sent from me, and that we had had the sea 
 between us from the age of fourteen to eighteen. 
 Upon this ground he construed my words into an 
 imputation against Miss Hicks ; whom, he in- 
 sisted that I inferred was less endowed with pa- 
 tience than my wife had been. I told him that no 
 such inference was to be drawn ; and that all 
 depended upon country, entirely upon country ; 
 and that I knew that Yankee girls would not wait 
 under such circumstances. The dispute grew 
 very warm ; and at last, in order to put an 
 end to it, we appealed to the Captain. The 
 Captain, who was a married man, and had a 
 family at Boston, had uniformly taken the side 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 of the Frenchman in all the various disputes about 
 country and government, and other matters, with 
 disputes about which we wiled away the time that 
 the "good ship Mary" kept us tossing about; 
 l)ut, in this case, I was not afraid to appeal even 
 to him, so confident was I of a decision in my 
 favour. "Now then," said I, " Captain Grin- 
 XELL, you have heard the whole story, do you 
 think that AIiss Hkks will wait for Monsieur 
 Lachaine, or do you not?" Both of us looked 
 hard at the Captain, and Lachaine with mani" 
 fest anxiety and fear, though he put on a smile. 
 The Captain, clapping his two elbows upon the 
 table, folding his hands together, and looking in a 
 very pleasant manner, Lachaine in the face, said, 
 " I am sorry. Monsieur, to decide in the favour of 
 this d — d saucy Englishman ; but, I know my 
 countrywomen ; and, at that age, 1 know that they 
 2vill not keejy." My wife, who had taken a warm 
 part with the Frenchman, it being a case in which 
 the sisterhood were concerned, exclaimed "For 
 shame. Captain Grinnell, and you a married 
 man too." As to Lachaine, while he applauded 
 this indignation of his advocate, and affected to 
 laugh at the decision, he was manifestly stricken 
 to the very heart. He, from that moment, drooped 
 down into a silent and sad individual, and there 
 was not a smile upon his face for the remainder 
 of the voyage, which lasted another month. By 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 this time, his singing-birds began to die ; the 
 black-bird was found dead one morning, the 
 thrush another ; another morning the lark, and 
 the linnet, and two or three others ; and so on, 
 till all were dead except the young bullfinches, 
 which my wife had fed, and which were fledged, 
 and had got their fine plumage before the end of 
 the voyage. I told the Captain (for the name of 
 ]\Iiss Hicks was never more mentioned to La- 
 chaink) that this dropping off of the birds was a 
 type of the waning passion of Miss Hicks. At last 
 the voyage ended, and we were, agreeably to an in- 
 vitation a month old, to go and dine, or sup, 
 whichever it might be, at IMadame L'Epine's, 
 and to be introduced to the intended. To I\Irs. 
 L'Epink'swc all went; and that lady took my 
 wife aside, even before she had got into the par- 
 lour. She soon joined us ; and, pulling me aside, 
 she whispered in my ear, *' IMiss Hicks is married." 
 I was going to burst out ; but she gave my arm 
 a pinch, and I held my tongue. Mrs. L'Epine 
 gave us some fine oysters, fried in batter, 
 which we all gobbled up as fast as we could ; 
 and J, giving the Captain a pull and a wink, 
 said that I must take my wife immediately down 
 to the house of a friend who was waiting for us ; 
 for which lie I beg pardon, for Grinnell and 
 Lachaixe were the only two persons in the 
 country that I knew even the names of. Coming 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPJJCABLE. 
 
 out at the door, the Captain sighed out, " Poor 
 fellow !" sliook me by the hand, and off we went, 
 leaving Lachaine and IMrs. L'Epine to their 
 agreeable eclaircissement. I saw the Frenchman, 
 a few years afterwards, at Philadelphia ; he was 
 quite an altered creature, looked to be three score 
 and ten, and, withal, had got into poverty; and I 
 have not the smallest doubt, that it was the cruel 
 disappointment that he experienced that was the 
 principal cause of this unfavourable change. Let 
 every young man remember this, and particularly 
 if he intend to have for his wife a native of New 
 England, New York, or New Jersey. As 
 Grinnell said, they will not keej) ; they are 
 good, they are beautiful, they are kind, they 
 make dutiful, cleanly, and good-managing wives ; 
 they are virtuous towards their husbands, they 
 are excellent mothers, and are deficient in none 
 of the duties of good neighbourhood and hospi- 
 tality : but if, after arriving at the age of sixteen, 
 you once put it into their heads that *you intend 
 to marry them, keep they will not. 
 
 159. Puddings. This is an article which, 
 in England, causes a large part of the consump- 
 tion of the whole of the wheat flour. Puddings 
 are more in fashion in England than in America. 
 They must have been of Saxon or British origin; 
 for we not only do not meet with them in France; 
 but Frcnchm.en, who, instead of being the most 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 polite, are, when cookery is talked off, the most 
 rude people in the world ; and, w-hile sitting 
 within the smell of one of their own kitchens 
 (for not to smell it, you must get out of the 
 house, be it as big as it may) ; while sitting 
 within the smell of one of these, which is a sort 
 of mixture, between fragrance and a stink ; and, 
 while I think of it, there is a place of this sort 
 in Cockspur-street, where the kitchen is under 
 the causeway, having some little gratings in the 
 causeway, for the escape of the fumes ; I am 
 sure, that, to fifty different persons, or, at least, 
 fifty different times, in walking over those grat- 
 ings, I have said to some one or more that were 
 with me, " which of two things that one could 
 name does that smell most like?" The French, 
 even within the smell of one of their kitchens, 
 will talk of English cookery, as if it were taken 
 for granted (which is the most insolent thing 
 in the world), that we know not how to pre- 
 pare the victuals for our own eating. The very 
 lowest of them behave in this same manner, 
 Mr. CuRWEX, in his book about the uses of milk, 
 and the keeping of cows, says, that, when he was 
 somewhere in the North of France, he happened 
 to see a decent leg of mutton hanging up for 
 sale ; and that, not having had a real good meal 
 of victuals during several weeks, he snapped at 
 the joint, bought it at any price (and he would 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 be sure to be cheated), and carried it to the iim 
 where he was going to lodge for the night, telling 
 the landlady to cook it for his dinner, with some 
 turnips : the landlady had not the smallest objec- 
 tion to this, resolving, I dare say, in her own 
 honest heart, to make the " Mi Lor " pay full 
 as much for his dinner as if he had not bought 
 the mutton ; for, all English people should know 
 that, though the French, generally speaking, are 
 very honest people, the very word honesty is 
 totally unknown to the keepers of inns for the 
 entertainment of travellers. Le(/ of mutton is, 
 in French, called gigot de mouton. Tiie land- 
 lady asked Mr. Curwen, in what manner he 
 wished to have the gigot dressed ; he told her 
 to hoil it for such a length of time, and to Ijoil 
 the turnips in clean water, till they were soft, 
 then to take them out, squeeze the water out 
 of them, and then mash them up with some fresh 
 butter. The woman stared at him all this while, 
 as if she thought him mad; and when he had 
 finished, she exclaimed, " Comment, Monsieur! 
 *' faire bouillir le gigot ? " " Yes," said he ; 
 *' boil it, I say, and boil the turnips soft, 
 " good woman, mash them well, and put some 
 " good butter in them," his mouth, I dare say, 
 watering as he spoke. The landlady rejoined; 
 " pour les navets, Monsieur, a la bonne 
 " heure; mais, pour le gigot, je vous en prie, 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 *' done, Monsieur !" putting her hands together, 
 and turning up her eyes, after the manner of the 
 supplicators of her country. Poor CuiiwEN, 
 beginning to be alarmed for his dinner, remon- 
 strated with her, when she launched out into all 
 sorts of abuse of such cookery, saying, amongst 
 other things, that it was only fit for the worst 
 of dogs. He observed to her, that it was lie 
 who was to eat the mutton, and not any body 
 else ; that it was one of the things that he was 
 most fond of, and that all his countrymen were 
 of the same taste ', and that, therefore, especially 
 as he was quite willing to pay for his dinner, 
 just as if she had bought the meat, and as it was 
 a very simple thing to do, and that he would 
 have no objection to do it himself, if she would 
 give him a pot and some water, he did hope (the 
 poor fellow began to tremble for his dinner), that 
 she, who appeared to be so amiable a person, 
 would indulge his caprice, thougb it might 
 appear rather unreasonable, or in bad taste. 
 While he was thus remonstrating, the conceited 
 and obstinate devil was studying her reply ; 
 and, at the conclusion of his supplication, she 
 said, being a little softened by his flattery, and 
 he being so sweet-looking a gentleman into the 
 bargain, "pour les navets, je le ferai bien, pour vous 
 faire plaisit; mais, pour Xeyiyotje ne lefcraipasV' 
 Stretching out her two arms, lii'ting her hands 
 
IX.] CORN IS AVPLICABLE. 
 
 above the top of her head, bringing them down 
 as low as her knees, and the pahns upwards : 
 "^ je ne le ferai pas ! " Laying a tripUcate 
 emphasis upon the word PAS. I will not do it ! 
 That word " not" thus pronounced, including in 
 it the meaning of " I'll be d— d if I do." The 
 poor " mi Lor" was compelled to submit, and to 
 eat his gigot, slivered up and served to him in 
 some ''■fricot," with all manner of herbs and 
 spices, and sweets and sours ; and cooked in the 
 melting of some bacon fat, till at last it had no 
 more the taste of mutton, than it had the taste, 
 I dare say, of any other sort of meat that she 
 could have cooked him. There is something 
 quite astonishing at this insolence of the French, 
 who are in general ready enough to imitate 
 the follies and the vices of the English ; and, 
 in nothing does this insolence so frequently ap- 
 pear as in their commentaries on our puddings. 
 They call them lum2:)s of dough, in their language 
 " de la pute." When I first went to the United 
 States, there was a French lad, who boarded in 
 my house, and, of course, he very frequently 
 had puddings put before him. He used to re- 
 coil at the sight, shake his head and shrug up 
 his shoulders, and exclaim " de la p^te," instead 
 of which he wanted bread; and, situated as we 
 were, amidst a scarcity of yeast, not near a 
 baker's shop, his taste became troublesome. I 
 
USES TO ^VHICH [Chap. 
 
 used no coercive means to make him swallow 
 the pdie ; but, put within his reach nothing but 
 the meat and the jhlte ; and he was too polite 
 «)r too prudent to make any positive remon- 
 strance ; so that, at the end of about a fort- 
 night, he took very kindly to the pate, which, 
 by that time, he called pudding ; and at the 
 end of a month, or thereabouts, the fellow 
 actually complained if there were a dinner 
 without pudding ; that is to say, he expressed 
 his regret or disappointment at it, and used 
 to slip away from his lessons in the morning, 
 to go and beg my wife to make a pudding for 
 dinner ; and no wonder, for they were of great 
 variety, made in the best manner, and of the 
 best materials. This defence of English food is 
 not necessary to satisfy ourselves of the value 
 and utility of puddings amongst people in 
 general ; but, I think it necessary to show, 
 how very useful the practice of making them 
 must be, in the families of those, where not 
 only money, but fuel and time are of so 
 much importance. It very frequently happens 
 that a poor man is short of fuel to heat his 
 oven. In the country, you must sometimes go 
 miles for yeast; and then, you must sometimes 
 be in a state of uncertainty of getting it at all : 
 you must wait, perhaps, for many days, in order 
 to receive it liy the carrier from the next big 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 town. Here is another evil that has arisen 
 out of the heavy taxes on malt and on hops, 
 and out of the cruel prohibition preventing the 
 poor man from raising his own hops ; and gene- 
 rally out of that terrible taxation, and that sys- 
 tem of degrading the labourers, which was carried 
 by Pitt to that state of perfection in which ic 
 has ever since remained. ISIr. John Ellman, an 
 old farmer of Sussex, said, in his evidence before 
 a Committee of the House of Commons, in 1S21, 
 that, vvhen he began farming, forty years before 
 that time, EVERY LABOURER^ OF THE 
 PARISH BREWED HIS OWN BEERj and 
 that now NOXE of them did it, except now and 
 then a man to whom he himself gave the malt. 
 Would not a House of Commons chosen by the 
 people at large j would not such a House of 
 Commons, upon reading this evidence of Mr. 
 Ellman, have voted unanimously, " that this 
 " House will never separate, until it has di- 
 '' gested a plan for inquiring into the cause of 
 *' this dreadful change ?" W^hen every poor 
 man brewed his own beer, yeast could never be 
 wanting in any neighbourhood. But, even then, 
 the time was as valuable as it is now, and more 
 valuable, and the same may be said of the fuel. 
 To make a pudding and boil it (for it may be 
 of all sizes, from that of your fist to that of your 
 head) is the work of not much more than an hour. 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 The wife and the whole family are a reaping, 
 we will say. Knowing that there is no Inead at 
 home for supper, she pops off home, turns some 
 of the flour into puddings of some sort, and there 
 they are for supper. In Norfolk, and par- 
 ticularly in Suffolk, the farmer's wife is never in 
 much distress about bread, the place of which 
 she suj)plies by dumplings ; and, perhaps there 
 is no way in which the flour yields more nutrition 
 than in this. To carry to the field, pudding 
 is not so good as bread ; but a hungry man gets 
 it down very well, though it is apt to " settle 
 the love" of people of feeble digestion. I can 
 remember many a score days of my life, when I 
 had the honour to serve His Majesty, that I 
 called to mind, almost with tears in my eyes, the 
 hard dumplings and skimmer cakes, which I used 
 to eat when 1 was a boy ; for, it is to be observed, 
 that in those my military days, though our com- 
 manders were so nice that it nearly required a 
 certificate of good moral character, though they 
 used to make us swear before they would accept 
 of our voluntary offers, that we were not, and 
 never had been, chimney-sweeps, colliers, or 
 miners ; that we were not papists, that we were 
 not Irishmen, and that we were not troubled 
 with Jits, including love fits, for ought I know to 
 the contrary. Although they were so nice in 
 their choice, and would insist in having straight 
 
IX] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 and tall fellows, and used to stare in our eyes to 
 see if we squinted, or were near sighted, and to 
 rummage our bodies about, having us laid down 
 upon a bench stark naked, to discover if we 
 had any latent disease; though they were so 
 nice as this in their choice, and though the 
 average of a whole battalion in those times far 
 surpassed the round-shouldered, and frequently 
 bandy-legged, company of creatures now called 
 grenadiers ; though they culled us with such care, 
 they gave us less than half as much pay as 
 that which they give to the hundred thou- 
 sand lovely youths that they have now got to- 
 gether ! Besides which, they gave us no meat 
 at fixed prices that would have made us disre- 
 gard the sufferings of the poor people of the 
 vicinage where we might be (juartcred. There 
 were only about sixteen thousand of us alto- 
 gether ; and those had not half as much to live 
 upon per week as the settled wages of a common 
 labouring man who had no children ; while, at 
 present, the common foot soldier has more 
 than twice as much as the magistrates allow 
 to that labouring man. I am aware, that no 
 introduction of corn, that no management with 
 regard to the application of the flour, that no 
 prescription for the making of puddings, will re- 
 move this grievance, which cries to heaven for 
 redress ; but, as I observed in " Cottagk Eco- 
 
 L 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 NOMY," this evil must be redressed sooner or 
 later ; or, this nation is destined to experi- 
 ence ruin and convulsion ; and that, therefore, 
 it is my duty, having the power to do it, to pro- 
 vide, before hand, advice that may be use- 
 ful when the days of redress shall arrive. Of the 
 use of puddings in general I have spoken ; I 
 .am now to speak of those made of corn-flour. 
 In Amkrica, they deal more in the mush that 
 I have described, which is equally useful with 
 the puddings, made with more expedition, and 
 a greater saver of time. Besides, they do not, 
 habitually, dress the flour into a very fine 
 state ; thev take out just the coarse bran, and 
 mix the rest, either with wheat or rye flour, in 
 the making of bread ; or, they use it amongst 
 families, of all ranks in life, in the shape o( jj07'- 
 ridffs, mush, homany, or narnp 5 or, as it will be 
 presently seen, in cakes. They care little about 
 PUBJHNGS ; but ice care a great deal about tliem. 
 In mv family, and of course under the direction 
 of my wife, we have, in the first place, suet pud- 
 dings boiled. Latter puddings boiled, Yorkshire 
 puddings baked under meat; and baked puddings, 
 in which the corn-flour supplies the place of 
 ground rice : we have all these puddings in the 
 greatest perfection, made icholly of corn-flour. 
 Last Sunday (9th Nov.) we had, at Kensington, 
 as fine a suet pudding as I ever tasted in my life 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 (and in iMs article I am both professional and 
 amateur) ; and the very finest batter pudding 
 that I ever tasted, and so said every one that 
 tasted it, and two of the party were not of 
 the family. The manner of making these pud- 
 dings, is precisely that of making them with 
 wheat-flour. But, two observations are necessary : 
 the suet pudding (the flour not being so adhesive 
 as that of the wheat) requires to be boiled in a 
 cloth or bag. This is generally the case with 
 all puddings of this sort in genteel families, 
 though when boiled in the dumpling way the 
 cloth is dispensed vrith. The other observation 
 is, that, in all these states, more water or more 
 milk, that is to say, a greater proportion of 
 these, must be used, than are used in the case of 
 the rice in one instance, and in the case of the 
 wheat- flour in the other instance. The corn- 
 flour is more nutritious, pound for pound, than 
 the wheat-flour ; and this is proved by the fact 
 that it requires a greater quantity of water or 
 milk to make it into dough, or into any given state 
 of moisture. The exact proportion of milk or 
 of water to be used, in the making of puddings, 
 I do not know, nor is it necessary that 1 should; 
 for every person, who understands the making 
 of puddings, and v.-ho is not perverse, will know 
 very well in a short space of time the quantity of 
 milk or of water necessary in all these cases. 
 l2 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 Say to "Mrs. Cook," "here is some corn- 
 flour, Cook ; make a batter pudding of it." She 
 will at once declare it to be impossible ; " Quite 
 " impossible, ma'am ! I never saw such a thing 
 *' in my life." If she have a little sense, and 
 particularly if she be saving money to get married, 
 and is given to understand that you mean to 
 have the pudding made, and properly made, 
 the will be converted by the end of the week, 
 especially if you give a hint, that though 
 she is a very good cook, and though you like 
 Ijer extremely well, you must havk the pud- 
 dings. Of course, I mean that the corn- 
 flour in these cases of butter puddings, ground 
 rice puddings, and Yorkshire puddings, and also 
 <»f suet puddings, if you make them with plums, 
 is, to have its share of eggs honestly allowed it ! 
 J am not pretending, or contending that the 
 corn-flour contains eggs within itself; and there- 
 fore I must strongly protest before hand, against 
 ** Mrs. Cook" leaving out the eggs, or any part 
 of them, and putting them by from her natural 
 desire, which she so rigidly carries into practice, 
 to spare the purse of her master ! No, no, let 
 us have our due share of the eggs, and we shall 
 liave better puddings ; I say better ; I repeat the 
 word better expressly, and I will abide by the 
 judgment of any ten women who are worthy to 
 be entrusted with the management of a family. 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 Let any man consider, then, the vast importance 
 of corn to this country, on scarcely any table in 
 which there is not, every day in the year, one or 
 more of the above named puddings, and this is a 
 fact well known to us all. At both my places, 
 Barn Elm and Kensington, I have altogether 
 fourteen servants, four of v/hom are of the 
 delicate sex ; there are three others of the same 
 sex ; then there are ten servants who are of the 
 more rude sex, and are no cripples at eating, and 
 four men who are not servants ; so that here are, 
 reckoning myself and the other members of my 
 own family, altogether twenty-two persons. I 
 now purchase my corn at Mark Lane, my own 
 being saved for seed ; and J calculate, that, by the 
 use of corn-flour, instead of wheat-flour, I, at this 
 time, save a clear sixty pounds sterling a-year, 
 with better and more plentiful living than we 
 could have if we had not the corn-flour. It is a 
 maxim with me never to stint as to quantity J 
 never to attempt to set a limit. It is also a 
 maxim with me, and to which I have invariably 
 adhered throughout the whole course of my life, 
 never to purchase any thing but of the very best 
 quality; be it what it may, fuel, meat, flour, 
 bread. Food for cattle, every thing of the very 
 best quality; and this I do upon a principle of 
 frugality and of saving in the result, and not from 
 any generosity or liberality that I set up preten- 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 sions to. I wish as much as other people, after 
 securing the point of good living, to go to work 
 in the cheapest manner I can. The fattest of 
 bacon and of pork, and the fattest of all other 
 sorts of meat ; and either fatting the animals 
 myself, or purchasing them from the fatter, or 
 from only one remove, or two removes at most, 
 from him. I regulate myself by the season of the 
 year ; but for the greater part of it, in the cases 
 where I am not the fatter myself, I stop the whole 
 carcass in the hands of him who kills the ani- 
 mal. Then, again, in the sort of meat, I do not 
 deal very largely with poulterers, nor with fish- 
 mongers. Billingsgate is troublesome and tick- 
 lish ; and as to poultry of any sort, they come 
 from the country by scores, dead or alive, when 
 J have a fancy for them. To be sure, in the former 
 case, there is a very swift succession of poultry ; 
 and it is somewhat the same in the case of meat. 
 I remember a prig of an attorney, whose good, 
 plain, and industrious father, who was a farmer, 
 had sent him up to London to make him a gentle- 
 man, saying, that his father used to kill his own 
 meat, and that it was " all baa one week, and maa 
 another week ;"and, thou foolish beast, where was 
 the harm of that ? The harm was, that your fru- 
 gal, and kind, and foolish father deprived himself 
 of many things which he ought to have enjoyed 
 in the latter part of his life, and, indeed, nearly 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 during his whole life, in order that he might be able 
 to puff you up into something with the name of 
 gentleman attached to it, that you might render 
 his conduct the subject of ridicule, and by impli- 
 cation libel his memory. 1 did not tell the prig 
 this ; but I told him to remember, that if his fa- 
 ther had not killed his own meat, that which 
 made him now an attorney, and gave him a 
 good solid estate (which his father had left him), 
 would have gone, in part at least, to the fitting- 
 out of retail butchers with gigs, their wives Avith 
 fine clothes, and their daughters with pianos. It 
 is very much "moo" one week, ^^ grunt" the 
 next week, " baa" another week, and " maa" 
 another; but let the shameless wretch, who thinks 
 this a hardship, look not at the farmer's labour- 
 62 8 who eat solid fat bacon or pork, from the 
 morning of one Christmas-day to the evening of 
 the next Christmas-eve ; but let the despicable 
 the affectedly luxurious wretch, look at the boys 
 of Winchester-school, who, generally, have been 
 brought up luxuriously enough ; but who, at that 
 school, never taste any meat but mutton, from 
 the day they enter it to the day they leave it. I 
 mention, I return to, and I dwell upon, this 
 mode of feeding a large family with the more 
 earnestness, because meat is the most costly ar- 
 ticle in supporting a family, and because I am 
 convinced that this mode of doing the thing pro- 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 duces, every thing taken into account, a saving 
 of full one-half. Let that be thought of by a 
 tradesman, who has a large family, and who lays 
 his account with toiling twenty or thirty years in 
 order to obtain a competence. The saving in 
 such a case is a fortune in itself; and if a man 
 ^o situated, suffer himself to be, by any of those 
 impertinent whims called prejudices, diverted 
 from pursuing the dictates of reason, he ought, 
 jn justice, to lead the latter part of his life in 
 a state of penury, if not in a state of want. 
 The same reason applies in every particular to 
 the use of corn-flour, in preference to that of 
 wheat, especially in this case of puddings ; the 
 relative cost, will at all times, be one-third at 
 least against the wheat-flour. At present, with 
 our scarcity of wheat, and, with the want of 
 knowledge, generally speaking, as to the use of 
 the corn-flour, the difference in the expense is 
 quite enormous ; and, this being so clearly on 
 the side of the corn-flour, where is the man, who 
 has not money actually to fling away, to find an 
 apologv for not insisting upon the use of corn- 
 flour in his family ; and that too, when his own 
 palate convinces him that it is better than the 
 other ? We all know what a fuss has frequently 
 been made in time of dearth, to get substitutes 
 for bread. Rice amongst other things has been 
 resorted to. Rice is a poor meagre feeble thing, 
 
DC.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 hardly sufficient to sustain life in a labourer, 
 especially in a country where the exertions of 
 the body are necessary to keep that body warm 
 in the open air. It does very well for creaturej* 
 that loll about in the sun ; but never can be 
 sufficient, in whatever quantity, and however 
 cooked, to give due support to the frame of the 
 labouring man in a climate like this. Vet, the 
 arrival of a few ship-loads of rice has sometimes 
 been a subject of almost universal congratulation. 
 Rice is far from being half so good as corn j 
 vv^hich any one will discover fronj making a 
 pudding from each, ground rice and corn-flour, 
 taking a pint of each, baking them both in the 
 ame oven, and tasting them on the same day. 
 If the rice pudding be baked in a manner to 
 make it sink in the middle, you will see a limpid 
 eatery stuff on the top of the pudding ; but in 
 the case of the corn pudding, over-baked iii 
 the same degree, you will find the top covered 
 with a species of jelly, and, when you cut it 
 across, resembling custard. This corn-flour, is^ 
 too, the best for tlit making of custards, which, 
 ought not to be adhesive. Most people know that 
 custards are made of eggs, milk, and flour ', very 
 little of the latter in proportion to the eggs and 
 the milk. The corn-flour, being sweeter than 
 that of the wheat, is better for this purpose ; 
 and, I wish all my readers, who have tlie 
 L 5 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 means, only to try this flour in the making of 
 custards. At present, indeed, they cannot get 
 the flour ; for, e\ en Mr. Sapsford, baker, cor- 
 ner of Queen Ann and Wimpole-streets, IMary- 
 le-bone, who has been the first to have the corn 
 ground to make bread and for sale as flour, can, 
 as yet, have very little to dispose of j seeing that 
 there are no samples at Mark-lane, worth speak- 
 ing of, and those very bad, coming from Sicily, 
 and other parts of the iMediterranean ; and 
 poorly ripened corn, perhaps, into the bargain. 
 But, when the Amekicans find that the people 
 of England are disposed to use corn-flour, and 
 when the millers in England, have found out the 
 way to grind it for that purpose, they will soon 
 pour in the fine and sound corn, notwithstanding 
 the duty ; and we shall buy it and eat it, not- 
 withstanding that duty. In the mean while the 
 Canadians can send it in at all times, nearly 
 duty free, as I have before observed. So that, 
 this discovery would be a terrible blow on the 
 landowners, supposing tlie farmers to join in one 
 body, and bind themselves by a curse, never to 
 cultivate this plant. 
 
 160. Cakes. — Bread at a moment's ivarningy 
 or something equal in nutriment to bread, is the 
 desirable thing to obtain, on account of the vari- 
 ous contingencies before mentioned, which must 
 always affect more or less, the making of bread. 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 One of the great advantages of puddings is, that 
 they convert flour into a substitute for bread in an 
 hour ; but, as I have observed before, one objec- 
 tion to them is, that they cannot be carried to the 
 field so conveniently as bread. It is not thus with 
 Cakes, which, without yeast, or leaven of any sort, 
 are made of the corn-flour and baked with very 
 little trouble. A Yankee will set hunger at defi- 
 ance, if you turn him into a wilderness with a flint 
 and steel, and a bag of corn-meal, or flour ; and 
 he likes the meal best, because it adlieres together 
 less closely than the corn-flour. He comes to 
 the spot, where he means to make his cookery, 
 makes a large wood fire xipon the ground, which 
 soon consumes every thing combustible beneath, 
 and produces a large hfiap of coals. While the 
 fire is preparing itself, the Yankee takes a little 
 wooden or tin bowl (many a one has done it in 
 the crown of his hat), in which he mixes up a 
 sufficient quantity of his meal with water, and 
 forms it into a cake of about a couple of inches 
 thick. With a pole he then draws the fire open, 
 and lays the cake down upon where the centre 
 of the fire was. To avoid burning, he rakes 
 some ashes over the cake first ; he then rakes on a 
 suitable quantity of the live embers ; and his 
 cake is cooked in a short space of time. Now, 
 such cakes can be made of wheat-flour, or of rye- 
 flour, or of the meal of either of these ', but the 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 flour of these heing so adhesive, the cake becomes 
 so hard that it can be ground by scarcely any 
 teeth that are to be found in the head of man. 
 Tlie corn-flour and the corn-meal, the latter still 
 more than the former, make the cake light and 
 somewhat spongy ; and, these cakes supply the 
 place of bread even by the choice of the consumers, 
 in instances innumerable; and it is contended by 
 many persons, and is, I believe, the general opinion 
 in Amerk A, that they are better for the health, 
 than bread that has been fermented. At any 
 rate, hundreds of thousands prefer this kind of 
 bread ; and, though it is attended with a little 
 more trouble than the making of puddings, it is 
 more convenient for carrying into the field or on 
 a journev ; and will, for these reasons, be fre- 
 (luentlv preferred. The people in Lancashire, 
 have not this cake-making to learn. They have 
 no oven, I mean the poorer sort ; but they make 
 lakes of oatmeal, which they put into a frying- 
 pan, or upon a smooth piece of iron, which they 
 put over their fire. These cakes are seen in the 
 lunises of those who are, comparatively, well off. 
 'J'hey are served at the tables of inns, in company 
 with bread 3 and many persons take the former in 
 ])reference. These cakes appeared to me to be 
 about the thickness of, and not very different in qua- 
 lity from, that large piece of leather which a coal 
 carter has hanging down from his poll to protect 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 his shoulders against the rubbings of the sack, and 
 the back of his neck from the beatings of the 
 rain. They are about the same colour, too, by 
 the time they come off from the fire ; and, if a 
 coal carter were hard pinched for a poll-piece, I 
 should think, that a Lancashire oat-cake might 
 prove a welcome succedaneum. At any rate, and 
 to speak without the smallest exaggeration, they 
 are unleavened bread of the very coarsest and 
 poorest kind, while the meal of which they are 
 made actually costs twice the sum, at this time, 
 that the meal of corn, so nutritious and so plea- 
 sant to eat, would cost the parties. I should 
 hope, therefore, that the merchants of Liver- 
 Pool, especially as the thing would comport so 
 perfectly with their own interests, would not let 
 these poor people wait for the obtaining of corn- 
 meal from plants grown in England. Nothing 
 can be so easy as the introduction of the thing. 
 There is nothing to be done but to send a bag of 
 corn meal to any manufacturing town, and to 
 send a dozen cakes ready made, along with it. 
 These may be baked in the oven of any baker in 
 Liverpool J and the thing might all be done, 
 and the suffering arising from the dearth of flour 
 and of oat-meal in a considerable part removed 
 by this winter's importation of corn. I have 
 mentioned the make-shift manner of obtaining 
 these cakes j but, they may be obtained in any 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 (}uantity by being put into the oven ; and, in the 
 Southern States of America they form a very 
 large part of the bread, even of j^ersons in the 
 most opulent circumstances, who, in many cases, 
 actually prefer this unleavened bread to bread 
 that has been made by a process that includes 
 fermentation. 1 do not say that I pi'efer it; 
 because I care so little about the matter ; but I 
 should think it no hardship ; it would be a thing 
 that I should not think worth a moment's thought, 
 if a law were passed to compel me to refrain from 
 fermented bread as long as I lived ; and, observe, 
 1 am not like fat Mrs. Tomkins, who (as I once 
 related in the Rkgister), says to fatter Mrs. 
 \\'iLKiNs, " If I have but a potatoe, Ma'am, I 
 never \\ant a bit of bread to my dinner." Now, I, 
 on the contrary, never want either to see or to 
 hear of a ])otatoe; and it is rare indeed that I 
 touch garden-stuff of any sort. So, that I should 
 find no relief by resorting to the garden ; and 
 yet, if a halfpenny were tossed up, heads for bread 
 and tails for corn-cakes, I would not, really, give 
 myself the trouble of looking to see whether it came 
 down heads or tails. Far different, with regard to 
 wheat-cakes, or rye-cakes, or oat-cakes, they 
 being lumpy stuff which I by no means admire. 
 Think, then, once more, of the benefit to the 
 labouring man. He and his family come home 
 from reaping, or from any other work. A little 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPICABLE. 
 
 bit of fire gives him cakes in an hour ; an- 
 other prepares other cakes to take a-field ; 
 and I say, that that gentleman, who, having the 
 knowledge himself, would not take the pains to 
 instruct the labourer to do this thing; but, know- 
 ing how to prevent it, would suffer him still to 
 run on tick or tally, at the chandler's shop, where 
 there is a profit charged even upon the profit of 
 the baker ; I say, that such a gentleman (if 
 gentleman he can be called) ought to share the 
 fate of Dives, and to be answered by this poor 
 man, as DrvEs was when he appealed to Abra- 
 ham to allow the poor man of his day to 
 bring a drop of water to cool his tongue. 
 When one reflects on the time which has been 
 spent, on the books that have been published, 
 and on the schemes which have been hatched 
 and attempted to be put into force for providing 
 food for the needy in times of dearth ; when one 
 reflects on the regulations, which, with this view, 
 have been adopted in large public schools, such 
 as Christ's Hospital, which by-the-bye is said 
 to have been founded by the Protestant king 
 Edward the Sixth, though it was founded by our 
 Catholic ancestors six hundred years before the 
 birth of that pious infantine tyrant, who saw the 
 first paupers ever known in England, and who, 
 instead of a law to provide relief for them, 
 passed a law for the burning of them in the 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 forehead, and for making them slaves to wear 
 chains with iron collars round their necks ; facts 
 which I dare any man with a name and reputa- 
 tion to deny in print : when one reflects on the 
 regulations in schools like this for the saving of 
 bread in times of dearth of that article ; when 
 one reflects on regulations of a similar kind, in 
 poor-houses and the like : when one thus reflects, 
 must it not be a subject of joy, to perceive 
 that here is a thing, come as propitiously, and 
 almost as wonderfully, as if it had dropped from 
 the skies, to put an end for ever, to the neces- 
 sity of all these regulations, and to all the dis- 
 putation, and all the ill blood between the rich 
 and the poor, arising from compulsory regula- 
 tions as to food ? If, in the year 1 800, corn 
 had been grown in England ; or, even if its 
 uses had been generally known, at the time 
 when the nation was paying enormous premiums 
 on the importation of human food, we should 
 not, indeed, have had, in the amiable person of 
 Mr.VANSiTJART (now LordBfiXLEv), a " CVw- 
 missioner of Scotch Heinings ;" nor should we 
 have had any of those heart-cheering paragraphs 
 and books, written for the purpose of showing 
 what delicious food, what delicious and nutritious 
 food the English people, if it were not for their 
 prejvdkes, might obtain by the potatoes of the 
 Irish and the herrings of the Scotch ; " the 
 
JX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 former (as the Reverend Mr. Agutter most 
 feelingly told us) placed at the bottom of the 
 kettle, or rather to within two inches of the 
 top; and then a fine heiring laid on them, 
 and sending its gravy (coming from guts and 
 all, mind) gently trickling down through the 
 potatoes, even the skins of which were made so 
 mellow bv the process, as to make it impossible 
 for any human being to reject them : " we should 
 indeed, never have heard of these things ; nor 
 should we have heard of some half score of mem- 
 bers of parliament, that I could name, being 
 reproached on the hustings, by the mass of the 
 people, with their attempts to cram this Irish 
 and Scotch diet down the throats of Englishmen. 
 These things we never should have heard of; 
 but if we had had the corn, we might have dis- 
 pensed with the honour of having a " Commis- 
 sioner of Scotch Herrings," and with the dish, 
 exquisite as it was, as described by the eloquent 
 pen of the Rev. Mr. Aggutter. The soup- 
 shops indeed, and the passports to the kettle, 
 which gentlemen and ladies carried about in 
 their pockets, one would not have wished to be 
 deprived of, being, as they were, a source of ever- 
 lasting fun. But, there was one thing which 
 We should have totally lost, or at least, should 
 never have enjoyed j namely, that decisive proof 
 of the " wisdom of Parliament," the passing of 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 ters abroad, is, " in every thing equally wise." 
 Then, like the proboscis of that wonderful animal, 
 the elephant, while it has strength perfectly ter- 
 rific to think of, its touch is so delicate as to 
 enable it to analyse particles the most minute ; 
 while it can, this minute, vote away millions of the 
 nation's money, command palaces and churches 
 to rise up, a quarter of a continent to be forti- 
 fied, or the jails and dungeons to fly open to re- 
 ceive such Englishmen as the Secretary of State 
 may, or shall, suspect of evil designs ; it can, the 
 very next minute, skip, as nimbly as the bee does 
 from the magnolia to the pimpernelle, to objects 
 the most diminutive, and can point out to those 
 who have the happiness to live under its con- 
 trol, the exact depth proper for a shop-window; 
 the exact number of passengers proper for a 
 coach to carry, lest those who wished to be car- 
 ried might not know, or care, whether their per- 
 sons were in danger or not ; the exact degree of 
 coercion proper to be employed for the purpose 
 of inducing horses, asses, oxen, cows, sheep, and 
 pigs, to proceed on the roads and in the streets; 
 the exact place and manner in which to unbut- 
 ton so as to avoid an " exposure of the person ;" 
 the exact number of beatings of a pendulum, in 
 a heat of sixty degrees by Fahrenheit's thermo- 
 meter, necessary to determine the length of the 
 *' Imperial yard," and the capacity of the " //«- 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 perial gallon ;" and to be brief (for a volume like 
 this would not suffice for the whole), it can as- 
 certain to a nicety how many square inches and 
 quarters and eighths of inches of paper, will pre- 
 vent that paper from receiving- matter of a ten- 
 dency to bring the Collective into contempt ; and 
 to ascertain, with equal precision, how many 
 farthings (as the price of a printed paper) are 
 required to prevent it from being bought and 
 read, in case of failure in the efficacy of the just- 
 mentioned geometrical precaution ! " In every 
 thing equally wise 3" but if any one (and I hope 
 some one ivill) were to make a collection, and a 
 record, of the instances of it sat once " omnipo' 
 tent" and all-searching and all-touching at- 
 tributes J its surprising knowledge in the affair of 
 mill-stones, flour, meal, pollard, bran, sieves, 
 bolting-cloths, yeast, leaven, sponges, fermenta- 
 tions, dough, and crust and crumb, will not, the 
 reader may be assured, be the least instructive, 
 and especially the least entertaining ; and, as I 
 observed before, this would never have been eli- 
 cited had corn been generally grown in England, 
 or had the uses of it been generally known 
 amongst us. 
 
 161. BreaT). This, from the almost universal 
 use of it, is generally looked upon as the " staff 
 of life," as it is called in the Scriptures 5 but 
 while its real goodness, its convenient form, and 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 many other circumstances, make it, in most 
 cases, the most valuable, perhaps, of all the 
 articles of human food; yet it is not always 
 such ; and, as to health, if the fermentation of 
 bread be unskilfully managed, bread is some- 
 times far from being a wholesome sort of food. 
 As to quantity of nutriment, cakes or puddings, 
 and particularly porridge or mush, are fully 
 equal to bread, weight for weight of flour. It 
 takes, I think, but about three iiounds and a half 
 of corn-flour to make porridge for ten persons ; 
 now , these three pounds and a half would make 
 about /b2<r pounds and a half of bread. This 
 would not be half a pound to each person ; and 
 this would be dry bread, and bread alone. There 
 must be cheese, or meat, and beer. The broth, 
 or the skim-milk in the porridge, costs somC" 
 thing; and a very trifle is tliat cost; not a half- 
 pemiy to every pound of flour. So that bread is 
 not always, nor is it nearly always, the desirable 
 article to have, to say nothing about the heating 
 of the oven and the time. Yet, it is, in most 
 eases, desirable to have bread as a part of the 
 food of a family, though to lay all out upon 
 bread, is the worst of economy, save and except 
 the laying it out upon potatoes. It is a very old 
 saying amongst country people, that a family 
 'may starve, but cannot live, upon bread alone. 
 Well, bread being to be made, let us now see 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 how the corn may be made to give its assistance 
 in the work. I am here supposing the bread to be 
 home-made, and that it is for vise in a farmer's, 
 a tradesman's, or a labouring man's, family ; for, 
 as to those who have money to waste without 
 any real injury to themselves, they may as well 
 waste it on the article of bread as in purchasing 
 throats-full of gas-stink, at the playhouses, or 
 elsewhere, with the reversion of a smother, by 
 way of inducement to purchase. As to the 
 general mode of making bread at Jiome, it has 
 been, by me, fully and circumstantially laid down 
 in CoTiAGE Economy; and, it has happened 
 to me, to become, since that little work was 
 published, 'personally acquainted with several ; I 
 might, I think, say m»ore than twenty, mistresses 
 of families, who have actually learned to make, 
 or to have made, bread in their own houses, and 
 who, until they read that book, never thought of 
 such a thing in their lives. In still more instances, 
 I have met with people now brewing their own 
 beer, who had never before thought of it, more 
 than of making their own pepper or ginger. I 
 cannot, even if I would, repeat here that which 
 I have said in " Cottage Economy," relative 
 to the making of bread in general, because I have 
 not room ; and, if there were not this objection, 
 it ought not to be done, seeing that those who 
 have not read " Cottage Economy," would still 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 be unacquainted with my opinions regarding the 
 advantages of making bread at home. That 
 book, and this along with it, cost but eight shil- 
 lings ; to that, therefore, for the inducements to 
 make bread at home, and for instructions in the 
 process, I refer the reader. Knowing how to make 
 bread with wheat-flour, we have now to learn how 
 cm^-flour is to be made into bread. The meal 
 and the flour of the corn is not so adhesive as that 
 of the ?t'7<£'«/, and still less so than that of the rye. 
 Flour from these, if made into unleavened cakes, 
 will be nearly as hard as a board, as we see in 
 the case o{ sea-biscuit. The corn-flour, if made 
 up and baked thus, would crack or crumble, or, 
 at least, easily break, and would be, and is in 
 cakes, easily masticated. This quality pre- 
 vents it, when used alone, from making a firm 
 loaf; and it is, therefore, to be, in the making 
 of leavened bread, mixed with the flour of wheat 
 or of rye. The proportions depend upon cir- 
 cumstances ; and they are, of corn-flour, from 
 two-eighths to six-eighths, which latter, an 
 American correspondent assures me, is the pro- 
 portion of corn-flour, used with rye-flour, in 
 New England. In Long Island, they, I believe, 
 generally use half rye and half corn-flour. I 
 now use one third of corn-flour; and, this 
 might, I dare say, be changed^ for one half, with 
 increased goodness of the bread ; but, it takes 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 some little time to get into the best way of 
 doing the thing, none of us having any know- 
 ledge of the proportions or of the mode of pro- 
 ceeding in the work, except my wife, who was 
 in Hampshire, when we began our operations. 
 And, here, let me, before I proceed further, do 
 justice to Mr. Sapsford, baker, corner of Queeu 
 Ann and Vv^impole Streets, Marybonne, who, 
 upon seeing, in the newspapers, my accounts of 
 the uses of the corn, set to work to give the 
 thing a trial, made bread, sold it, and also sold 
 the flour, and now sells both. But^ he laboured 
 under every possible disadvantage ; for, his corn 
 (the only corn he could then get) was from Sicily , 
 very old, badly ripened, and had many musty 
 grains in it. He has now, I understand, received, 
 or, is about to receive, some corn from Liverpool, 
 shipped at Baltimore. I have seen the sample ; 
 and it is of the finest description. Then the 
 public will see a fair trial. But, with all his 
 disadvantages, what with pains taken to pick 
 over, or to wash, the corn, he has made admira- 
 ble bread ; and, w^th a degree of public spirit 
 not over-often to be met with, has made as 
 generally known as he has the power to do 
 without actually expending money for the pur- 
 pose, the manner of making the bread, not wish- 
 ing to keep the thing secret for his own exclu- 
 sive benefit. Requesting Mr. Sapsford to ac- 
 
 M 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 cept of an expression of my share of that public 
 gratitude that is his due, I now proceed to de- 
 scribe the method, in wliich ive, in my family, 
 proceed in the making of bread, consisting partly 
 of wheat flour, and partly of that proceeding from 
 corn. I shall suppose, that one third corn-flour 
 is to be used, and of course, two-thirds wheat. 
 In paragraph 102 of Cottage Economy, you 
 will have read the instructions relative to the art 
 of mfiking bread. Let the quantity to be baked be 
 a bushel ofjlour; that is to say, fifty-six pounds. 
 Then there will be, disregarding fractions, thirty- 
 eight pounds of wheat- flour and eighteen pounds 
 of corn-flour. But, you are not at once to mix 
 these together while dry. You put the thirty- 
 eight pounds of wheat-flour into the baking- 
 trougli; then, you scald the corn-flour, by pour- 
 ing on it, and mixing it up with, four quarts of 
 hoiViog water ; which, when well stirred, will 
 just wet the corn-flour, to every four and a half 
 pounds of which we put, in this stage of the process, 
 one quart of boiling water ; and this will only 
 just wet it in such degree as to leave no part of 
 it quite dry. Having thus scalded the corn-flour, 
 you lay it out in little lumps, on something 
 clean, to cool, so that you can handle it freely. 
 Then take it, and I'ub it well and finely into 
 the thirty-eight pounds of wheat-flour that you 
 have in your baking-trough. This being done, 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 , the whole will look like a parcel of dry flour ; 
 and you proceed, just as directed in paragraph 
 102 of Cottage Economy, to set the sponge, to 
 mix the bread, to let it rise, to make the dough, 
 to heat the oven, to set in the bread, and to take 
 it out when baked. There is nothing difficult 
 in the matter ; and the consequence is, even 
 better and more wholesome bread, and a great 
 saving of expense. A bushel of best wheat-flour 
 will make no move good bread than seventy-three 
 pounds 'j and a bushel of corn-flour luill make 
 more : it will absorb more water v/ithout 
 being too wet, and yields, therefore, pound for 
 pound, more bread. The finer the v.-heat- flour 
 is, the more water it will absorb ; but the very 
 finest of wheat- flour will not absorb so much 
 water, pound for pound, as corn-flour. At this 
 time the difference in the price of the two is, if 
 one gets the corn at Mark Lank, one-half; it is 
 that of fifteen shillings and seven shillings and 
 sixpence in a bushel of flour; so that, as J bake 
 about two bushels a week, here is a saving of 
 fifteen shillings a week, which is thirty-nine 
 pounds a year, in the article of bread alone. 
 But what, then, is the saving, if I reckon the 
 wheat-flour that would be used in puddings and 
 in porridge, more than twice the quantity that is 
 used in bread ? The saving altogether is not less 
 than one hundred and thirty pounds a year. To 
 Ri 2 ' 
 
USES TO WHICH [Chap. 
 
 be sure, mine is a very large family, and chiefly 
 consists of stout, hearty, working men, and young 
 men too. Yet many a man has as large a family 
 to feed ; and, at any rate, if frugality be an ob- 
 ject with the party, he saves in proportion to his 
 consumption. I know well that half-and-half 
 corn-flour, with either wheat or rye-flour, is the 
 right ^proportion ; it is what they use in Long 
 Island of rye and corn-flour. And am I to be 
 told, that the people in England, and especially 
 those who have not enough of any thing at all to 
 eat, will not use the flour of corn I If they can- 
 not get it, they will not ; but if they can, they 
 will J and the porridge and the mush and the 
 cakes and the puddings will soon banish the vil- 
 lanous potatoe from the land. If I be asked how 
 the corn-flour is to obtained, I say, in the same 
 way that wheat- flour is. Just now, indeed, no- 
 body that I know of, sells it, except Mr. Saps- 
 ford, and he must sell as a balccr, 4)i co\xx^e. But 
 it soon will be to be had anywhere. I have ground 
 and dressed my own, for years, in little steel mills, 
 to be had of Mr. Parke, of Fenchurch-street. 
 But Mr. Sapsford has his ground by millers; and 
 I have just had a sack very well ground at the 
 ivind-mill on Barnes Common. So that there is 
 no conjuration in it. Ah ! only let us get the 
 CORN, and there will be no difficulty in getting 
 the^owr. 
 
IX.] CORN IS APPLICABLE. 
 
 162. Beer. — There is no doubt of corn mak- 
 ing excellent heer. It is used, in America, in the 
 making of spirits ; and, a gentleman, who came 
 to see my corn-field, told me that corn was thus 
 used in Van Diemen's Land, and that it made the 
 finest and strongest of beer. 1 have no doubt 
 upon the subject ; and 1 mean to try it, if I do 
 not find the law interpose too many obstacles. If 
 this should be the case, we'shall soon bid adieu to 
 our old and justly esteemed and admired friend 
 ''Sir Joltn Barley cor7i;" for here is double amount 
 of crop, pretty nearly double quality, and clean 
 land into the bargain. If this should be the case, 
 what will the reptile of The Farmer's Journal 
 then say ? Why, the wretch'will say nothing ; and 
 try to slide unperceived into the general opinion. 
 Barley-land is just the land for corn. As far 
 as food for pigs and poultry goes, the latter 
 imist supplant the former ; and I, for my part, 
 have no doubt of its supplanting it also in the 
 making of beer. 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Amount and value of a Corn- crop, compared vnth 
 those of other crops. 
 
 163. I have little more to do, in stating the 
 amount of my crop of this year, thvan to repeat 
 here what I published a few days ago (it is 
 now Nov. 20), relative to the same matter, and 
 which was, in substance, this : With regard to 
 the amount of the crop ; it would be quite impossi- 
 ble, without very extraordinary means, to ascer- 
 tain the amount of the whole of the crop, sooner 
 than about the middle or end of January ; for, first, 
 about the third part of the crop is yet standing in 
 the field. Last Thursday (I3th November), it 
 was much more than half standing in the field ; 
 but, on that fine afternoon, we reduced the stand- 
 ing crop to one-third, or thereabouts. Not the 
 smallest harm does it take all this time, but be- 
 comes harder and harder. The wet does it no 
 harm ; for the moment the rain ceases and the 
 wind comes, however little the latter may be, it is 
 drv again. When 1 say that we have gathered 
 in two third parts of the crop, I by no means say, 
 that we have husked so much, for we have not 
 
AMOUNT AND VALUE OF CROP. 
 
 husked a, tiventieth part. The ears, husks and all, 
 are put into the barn, on the floors as weU as iu 
 the bays, and they are laid a yard or four feet 
 thick under a large granary to keep theai from 
 the wet until they can be husked, from which we 
 have been called off for the purpose of taking up 
 a large crop of mangel-\vurzel. So that, it will be 
 impossible to ascertain the whole crop until about 
 the time that I have mentioned, before which,, 
 every part of it will, perhaps, have been sold. 
 
 164. But, I have ascertained the amount of 
 the crop, as nearly as possible j in doing which I 
 have proceeded thus : — 1 went into the field, some 
 days ago ; into what I deemed the best part of 
 the field, and measured out a piece precisely a 
 rod square : I had the ears gathered, carried into 
 my study, and had them husked, and then the 
 grain rubbed off in my presence. The result was, 
 your gallons and three quarts, Winchester mea- 
 sure, besides tlie nubhings, as the Yankees call 
 them, of which I will say more presently. There 
 being IGO square rods in a statute acre, and there 
 being eight gallons in a bushel, and four quarts in 
 a gallon, the crop, according to this specimen, is 
 NlNETY-FiVE BUSHELS TO THE ACRE. 
 The nuhbings on the rod I reckon to be equal in 
 value to a pint of good grain. But, 1 never took 
 them into my original estimate ; so that I fall five 
 bushels an acre short of that estimate. When I 
 
AMOUNT AND [Chap. 
 
 say that I took the rod in what I deemed the best 
 part of the field, I do not mean that that part was 
 by any means singularly good. About eight acres 
 of the field \vere pretty much upon a level in 
 point of crop ; and I took no pains to select a 
 singularly good spot. 
 
 165. If I were to include the nubhings, at a 
 pint of good grain to a rod, here would be two 
 and a half bushels more\ but, thougli these 
 fiubbrngs of my whole field would more than fat- 
 ten six large hogs, [ do not reckon them at any 
 thing. I founded my estimate on an experiment, 
 on a small scale, that I made last year, when, at 
 the same distances, 1 had « mz«cA larger ci'op; 
 and, thougli I took into my calculation, that, in 
 that experiment, not a single plarit missed; yet, 
 until I came to the actual gathering, the other 
 day, I found that I had not made sufficient allow- 
 ance for gaps. The fact is, that, when I said a 
 livndred bushels, I expected much more; but, when 
 I came to a minute examination as to the num- 
 ber of gaps (caused by the birds, as formerly 
 mentioned), I was not surprised at my miscalcu- 
 lation. 
 
 166. However, here, with all the defects (and 
 they were many and great) in the tillage and 
 management, is a most valuable crop. Very bad 
 and stale samples of corn now sell at Mark-lane 
 for 4os. the quarter. So that the head grain of 
 
X.] VALUE OF CROP. 
 
 this crop of mine would be worth, even at this 
 rate, 26/. 15^. an acre, which, I will venture to 
 say, is more than three times the value of the 
 average crop of wheat this same year ; not to 
 mention the loads of good fodder : and, not to 
 mention, the fine state in which the crop leaves 
 the land ; not to mention, either, that this crop is 
 not sIk months upon the ground, and that it may 
 follow or be followed by a crop of wheat, without 
 danger to either crop. I claim great merit on 
 account of this undertaking; for, what can be 
 of so much importance, what can deserve so much 
 commendation, as the doing of that, which must 
 of necessity prevent the possibility (except in the 
 case of the judgments of God) of a scarcity of 
 ood being known in the country ? We know 
 what the price of bread is at this moment; we 
 know what pinchings millions will be compelled 
 to endure during the approaching winter ; and 
 every one, who reads this book, must be con* 
 vinced, that bread instead of being thirteen 
 pence for the four pounds weight, would, if corn 
 had been in general cultivation, have been at 
 about four- pence a four-pound loaf. My crop, 
 supposing it to be eight hundred bushels, for I 
 always allowed that three of the acres out of the 
 eleven were not to be counted, having been almost 
 .totally destroyed, and the ground having been 
 planted in the summer with Swedish turnips, and 
 M 5 
 
AMOUNT AND [Chap. 
 
 mangel-wurzel; supposing my crop to be eight 
 liundred bushels of shelled corn, and supposing the 
 corn to yield forty-five pounds of flour per bushel, 
 we know that corn makes more bread and more 
 pudding or more cake, pound for pound, than 
 wheat-flour does ; and we know that fifty-six 
 pounds of wheat- flour malce seventy-three pounds 
 of bread; and we, therefore, know that these 
 eight acres of mine would, if thus applied, have 
 made upwards of eleven thousand four-pound 
 loaves', more than three times the quantity, 1 say 
 and prove ; na'\', more than five times the quan- 
 tity, tliat could this year on an average be made 
 out of the produce of eight acres of wheat ; and, 
 even upon the three acres, the mangel-wurzel 
 ' and the turnips (for there they still are) are a 
 good crop, where I could have had nothing in case 
 of a summer failure of wheat. 
 
 167. To compare the ivorth of this crop with 
 that of other crops, we are not to content our- 
 selves with its value in itself ; but, are to consi- 
 der all its great advantages over other crops as 
 to the time required for its growth ; the security 
 of it against wet harvests ; the state in which it 
 may safely find, and that in which it will neces- 
 sarily leave, the land ; and must never omit the 
 circumstance, that it may, and must frequently 
 render a bad crop of wheat, or a bad wheat har- 
 vest, of little consequence to the country. Such 
 
X.] VALUE OF CROP. 
 
 would have been the case this very year, if corn 
 had been generally cultivated in England. Nay, 
 such, TO ME, is the case now. I need care little 
 about the high price of wheat ; I use very little, 
 comparatively ; if I had rye, I would use no wheat 
 in the farm-house ', but, as it is, I have corn, and I 
 care little about the price of wheat ; and, if the. 
 use of corn were now generally known, it would 
 be brought from abroad in such quantities as to 
 lower the price of the loaf from thirteen pence 
 to about seven pence. 
 
 168. The wheat crops are frequently injured, 
 and greatly diminished in their amount, bv the 
 wire-worm, the slug, or the floods ; and wheat 
 fields are, on account of these injuries, often 
 ploughed up, and sowed with barlej^, or oats, or 
 kept for turnips. Here is so much bread lost ; 
 but if cor7i came to supply the place of ploughed- 
 up wheat, all would be well again ; the quantity 
 of bread would suffer no diminution. Corn ivS 
 subject to no smut ; to no blight ; no mihleiv ; 
 and never suffers, as wheat does, from too muck 
 richness in the ground. V^^heat will not stand 
 this excess of richness ; it will rm all to blade ; 
 it will fall down J it must be ^^ flagged,'' or it 
 will bear no grain. This is never the case with 
 corn, which will bear any richness of land. 
 
 169. Then, again, the quantity of seed 
 is so small in the case of corn, that it really 
 
AMOUNT AND [Chap. 
 
 does not make from the crop a deduction worthy 
 of notice. We all know, that, to get on an ave- 
 rage twenty -eight bushels o{ wheat, we must sow 
 three bushels. Now, to get an acre of corn of 
 iromffty to a hundred bushels, there needs only 
 about six quarts of seed. We know, that, after 
 every harvest, the seed-market stops, in a great 
 degree, the supply of bread-wheat, and that it 
 takes away the very best part of the crop of 
 wheat 3 and we know, that there is such a fuss 
 about seed-wheat, sending miles and miles for it; 
 and, indeed, the pains, though necessary, are 
 endless. In the case of corn, in a good large 
 pair of great-coat pockets a farmer may carry 
 seed for a corn-field home from his neighbour's 
 crib, if he take a fancy to that in preference to 
 his own. No man, after the third or fourth year 
 from this, will ever buy seed-corn ; such a thing 
 was never heard of in America, and it never will 
 be heard of here. 
 
 170. But, if this plant be a valuable acquisi- 
 tion to the higher and middle ranks, what is it 
 to the labourer! He must and tvill have the 
 great benefit of it. It is out of nature, that he 
 shouM continue to plant and to eat potatoes ; to 
 suppose such a thing possible, would be to sup- 
 pose him as senseless, as destitute of reason, and 
 €ven more destitute than the beasts that perish. 
 in short, the thing cannot be ; and the introduc- 
 
X.] VALUE OF CROP. 
 
 tion of the plant will, in a few years, make a 
 total revolution in the relative state of farmer 
 and labourer ; the reasons on which I found this 
 opinion it is not necessary now to state ; and, be- 
 sides, a statement of them would lead me too far 
 from the matter, with which I am about to con- 
 clude my book. 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 Conclusion 5 Addressed to the Readers of the 
 Re()ister. 
 
 171. My friends, tliis concluding Chapter of 
 a book, which, on account of the importance of 
 the subject of which it treats, is hkcly to be 
 widely circulated, attentively read, and long pre- 
 served, I, from a sense of justice due to you as 
 well as to myself, address to YOU. To the 
 nation', or to the public, as it is called, I 
 owe not as much as the value of one of the 
 dead silks on one of my corn-ears. I owe them 
 nothing; and, if 1 had been as vindictive to- 
 wards them, as many of them have been to- 
 wards me, I should, when 1 had made this dis- 
 covery by experiment, have kept the fact hidden 
 in my own bosom, as an ill-treated and indig- 
 nant labourer does when he justly and quietly 
 puts his foot upon the nest of the pheasant or of 
 the partridge. To YOU, I owe a great deal ; you 
 have been the encouraging companions of my 
 studies"; your faithful adherence, amidst all 
 the calumnies you have had to endure, has 
 been a source of great consolation to me ; and, 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 therefore, on this important occasion, 1 addres 
 myself to you. 
 
 1/2. I have, in the first place, to remind you, 
 that the Morning Chronicle, some time ago, pub- 
 lished a letter of a person under the name of 
 " Corn Planter," who asserted in the most 
 positive manner that my corn would not ripen. 
 I said then that the envious and malignant beast 
 was some tax-eating Scotchman. Doctor Black 
 did not know, or pretended not to know, who the 
 real author was ; but I do not believe Doctor 
 Black.. This very day (2 1st November) I have 
 finished my harvest. Let the base Scotchman 
 split with envy. The Farmer's Journal, that 
 advocate for Corn Bills, that pupil of Webb 
 Hall, that hck-spitt!e of the Landlords, that 
 prosing preceptor of the " Agriculturists" that 
 most stupid and malignant of all the shuffle- 
 breeches crew that ever practised farming in a 
 stinkinggarret of the wen ; that fungus of the copses, 
 that toadstool of the meadows, that smut in the 
 corn-fields, that stout in the back of the cow, 
 that bott in the bowels of the horse, that maggot 
 beneath the tail of the sheep ; that nastv and 
 despicable thing, hardly fit to be touched with 
 the point of the prong, or to be tossed away by 
 the edge of the shovel, had the impudence, as 
 well as the folly, to curl up its odious-looking 
 nose and to assert, that my corn would not ripenj 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 anrl, that if it would ripen, it would he good for 
 next to nothing. This is a pretty teacher of the 
 farmers ! The wretched thing thought it should 
 flatter them by putting forth an opinion tending 
 to make them believe that nothing could add to, 
 that nothing could make any real beneficial 
 addition to, the crops which they already pos- 
 sessed, and of which they understood so perfectly 
 well the way to go to work always to secure 
 a sufficient abundance. The wretched creature 
 thought that it should flatter them in this way : 
 it might think besides that the thing would not 
 succeed ; but, then, if it did think this, and 
 that, too, in opposition to the opinion so pos- 
 itively expressed by me, what a wretched crea- 
 ture it must have Ijeen ; and what worse than 
 wretched creatures are those, who bestow their 
 time and their money on its miserable produc- 
 tions ! They are generally full-pursed and empty- 
 skulled bull-frogs, who, in many cases, are the 
 coi^espondeyits of the wretch, and who endea- 
 vour to impose on their neighbours and their 
 wives, by reading their own productions to them. 
 I mean those of them who are cursed with the 
 scribbling-itch ; and, amongst these fellows, who 
 never ought to have been out of a smock-frock, 
 this disease is frequently very prevalent. They 
 Write " Letters to the Farmer's Journal," but 
 are always advised by their prudent wives to 
 
XI.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 keep their names out of print. Then, when the 
 letter comes back; with its date and its fanciful 
 signature, how proud they are ! The paper is 
 sure to go to market, '^ Thafs a good letter, 
 cant it, Mr. Jolterhead ? " Jolterhead reads it, 
 suspects- its source, and then says something in 
 praise of it. " Good peeaper, eant it; do you take 
 it in ? " The conversation ends with advice to 
 brother Jolterhead to take in the Farmer's 
 Journal ; and thus is the circle of stupidity 
 extended. 
 
 173. Not to waste our time, however, any 
 longer upon this wretched thing, here we have 
 the indubitable fact of the ripening; and that, too, 
 
 of the LARGEST CROP of CORN THAT I EV^ER 
 
 SAW in MY LIFE. I have read, or heard, 
 of a hundred bushels to the acre in America ; 
 but, when I was last in that country, I wrote 
 from Long Island to an old friend in Penn- 
 sylvania, who, and whose father had been far- 
 mers, in that State, all their lives long, to tell me 
 what had been his average crop of corn, and wha 
 his average crop of wheat. He said of the corn 
 that it was from twenty to thirty bushels; and of 
 wheat, that it was from fourteen to seventeen 
 bushels ; and the Winchester bushel prevails, 
 exclusively, all over that country. Another fact, 
 and a very interesting one, concerning the Ame- 
 rican crop of corn, is the following, taken from 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 the New York Evening Post, of some day in 
 September last, and extracted by the New 
 York Evening Post, from a paper called The 
 Winchester Herald, dated on the 26th of 
 August, 182S. The extract is in the following 
 words : 
 
 174. " EXTRAOBDINARY GROWTH OF CoRN. 
 
 It has been generally remarked, that corn in our 
 county the present season promises unusually 
 well ; and if there be many instances of the 
 kind we are about to relate, we shall most 
 readily adopt the conclusion. Last week a 
 farmer called upon us to state, that he had, 
 with some others, taken from a single stalk of 
 corn on the farm of Mr. A. Dickerson, in Bed- 
 ford, seven ears containing together 2,077 grains 
 of corn ! This exceeds all former product of 
 this valuable article we have ever known." 
 
 175. Now this is a very striking fact. You 
 will recollect that the American corn is planted 
 in hills four feet apart each way ; and that they 
 liever put more than four or five plants in a hill. 
 Suppose it to be five, which is very seldom the 
 case : then, you will find upon calculation 
 that here are not above fifteen thousand plants 
 upon an acre, whereas, at my distances of this 
 year, rows three feet apart, and the plants eight 
 inches apart in the row, there stand 21,700 
 plants. Then, in all probability, this single 
 
XI.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 stalk of jMr. Dickerson had been, as is fre- 
 quently the case, the only plant left in the hill. 
 So that, thks plant had all the nourishment 
 destined for the use of the jive. Well then, 
 this extraordinary growth of corn may enable 
 us to judge, when it is compared with my growth, 
 of the relative crop, that is to say, which of 
 the two countries is capable of producing most. 
 I had one plant, standing in its ordinary place, 
 with its neighbours standing in their ordinary 
 places, having no suckers coming out of it ; and 
 it had '' seven full ears rank and good," such as 
 Pharaoh saw upon the stalk in his dream. 
 Some plants with suckers had as many as eleven 
 ears each ; but this seven-eared plant had but 
 one single stalk. One ear was broken off, by 
 mere accident 3 or rather some man cropped 
 it off without perceiving what he was about. 
 The full and fair ears of my corn have, upon an 
 average, somev/here betv/een two hundred and 
 seventy and three hundred grains in each. I am 
 talking of the head ears, as we do of wheat, and 
 not of the under ears; for corn has these as 
 well as wheat. They are inferior in size, though 
 most of the grains in them are equally good in 
 quality with those of the head ears. 
 
 176. These ears of mine, then, have upon an 
 average 285 grains, and seven of these have 
 1995 grains. But observe, that the American 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 seven ears, which contained 2077 grains (only 
 82 grains more than any seven of mine) were of 
 extraordinary growth ; and so extraordinary as 
 to be the subject of such particular detail in 
 American Country Newspapers ; and, to cause 
 the article containing the detail to be inserted in 
 the newspapers of the great cities. Precisely 
 how many grains there are in the six ears which 
 remain on my Master plant, I cannot say ; be- 
 cause my Son, Avho is the real author of this 
 great event, wished to present it to the King's 
 Gardener, to be kept, if he chose, amongst 
 the things to be seen at the Botanic Garden at 
 Kew ; and, it was impossible to count the grains, 
 without stripping off the husks, and to strip off 
 the husks was, in ajgreat measure, to demolish 
 the plant ; but, I have no doubt that that plant 
 had on its one stalk as many grains as this ex- 
 traordinary plant in America. My grains are 
 not so large as the American, however. Perhaps 
 they may be a third smaller. But, they are as 
 good in quality ; and, this difference in size is 
 very far outweighed by the number of my grains 
 on an acre. 
 
 177. IMy corn is not only the largest crop of 
 corn, acre for acre, but much the largest ; for, 
 i have very seldom heard even rich men in 
 America, who lay wagers about crops of corn ; 
 though not in the infamous manner that the 
 
XL] CONCLUSION. 
 
 English hop-planters and hop-dealers do about 
 crops of hops, and who carry on a species of 
 gambling, well meriting the pretty severe anim- 
 adversions of the law ; not a roguish sort of 
 gambling like this, but, who lay trifling wagers 
 as to the positive or relative amount of theirs and 
 their neighbours' crops of corn : I have never heard 
 even these, opulent amateur farmers talk about 
 any thing beyond sixty or seventy bushels to the 
 acre ; or, if I have heard of a hundred, it has 
 been of something that nobody believed in. Now, 
 my crop, if under ears and all were included, 
 even saying nothing about the dilapidations of 
 the birds, would be a hundred bushels ; and, 
 I will bet (for it is a very good way of bringing 
 the dispute to a test) a hundred pounds, that 
 I grow a hundred and five bushels to the acre 
 next year, on ten acres of land all in one piece ; 
 and that, too, in the wide distances recommended 
 in my book. I should not be afraid to bet upon 
 a hundred and fifty bushels to the acre ; but 
 upon a hundred and five, I am ready to bet with 
 any body. 
 
 178. Not only is mine the largest crop of 
 corn that I ever saw ; but the ears are the Jullest 
 and the most perfect. The American ears are 
 very seldom, however fine they may be, filled 
 with grains up to the tip-top. There is gene- 
 rally, I say generally, a little part of the tip of 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap, 
 
 the cobb that has no grains upon it. Sometimes 
 this imperfect part is two inches long ; at others, 
 it is not half an inch, perhaps ; but in mine, it 
 rarely happens that the top of the cobb is not 
 crowned with grains ; and this has surprised me 
 more than any other circumstance connected 
 with this interesting experiment. So prolific 
 have some of the plants been, that we have 
 found many, very many ears, each having 
 a small ear growing out from the side, or, rather, 
 bottom of it. In several instances, two small 
 ears growing thus ; in some instances three ; in 
 one instance, at Kensington, four ; in one in- 
 stance, at I3arn-Ehn, Jive ; and, in another six ; 
 so that, in this last instance, there is a clump of 
 seven ears, coming out of one and the same 
 foot-stalk or tail. A parcel of these ears to- 
 gether, is, I think, one of the most beautiful 
 things that man ever saw, especially wlien as- 
 sociated with the idea of the mass of bread and 
 meat that it in reality contains. The general 
 colour of the outside of the grain, is a bright 
 yellow ; but there is frequently a plant that pro- 
 duces purple ears, or, rather, a shade between 
 a purple and a red. This mixture of colours in 
 a heap of ears, adds to the beauty ; but that 
 is all the advantage that I know of; for, the 
 flour of both is of the same colour and of the 
 same quality ; and it is curious enough, that 
 
XI.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 while there are ahvays some red ears, as the 
 Americans call them, in a field of corn ; if you 
 plant the red grain, the fruit will not be red, 
 except in the usual proportion . The variety of 
 colours is, howevfer, attended with one yery de- 
 lightful circumstance, to young people in par 
 ticular. All those who are not naturally fond 
 of work (and that seldom happens to young 
 people), like to work in company; audit is the 
 fashion with the American farmers to call the 
 husking " a frolic." The cunning fellows know, 
 that if they were to call dancing ivork, it would 
 be a pretty hard matter to get a j^arty together. 
 There can be no other reason tlian this for all 
 the families of a whole neighbourhood collecting 
 together, to husk farmer Jonathan's corn 
 to-night, and farmer Ebenezer's to-morrow 
 night, and so on ; for, it is as plain as the 
 nose on your face, that twenty families would do 
 the same work in twenty night*, each family 
 sticking to their own corn. Long-headed far- 
 mers know that they would not stick to it, and, 
 therefore, they resort to this system of frolics ; 
 and I dare say that the same will be done in Eng- 
 land after a little time. Young women and their 
 sweethearts do not think about toping, and yet 
 there must be something to amuse, something to 
 prevent the mind from entertaining the gloomy idea 
 that this is work. The red ears come very op- 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 portunely to answer this purpose ; for the man, 
 that has the good fortune to fall ujion a red ear, 
 is entitled to kiss any of the girls that he pleases, 
 and if a girl find a red ear, she must submit 
 to be kissed by some one of the males of the 
 party. So that there is a constant looking out for 
 these red ears, and a laughing and joking upon 
 the circumstances attending the success of the 
 parties who happen to get them, in the case of 
 my corn, however, where the proportion of red 
 ears is greater, ten to one, than it is in the 
 American corn, this amiable regulation must 
 not be adopted ; for it would be a frolic indeed : 
 there would be nothing but kissing, which is by 
 no means what the farmer would aim at when 
 he assembled his congregation of buskers. 
 Nevertheless, and so it would be found upon 
 experience, the frolic system is a good one : 
 the privilege of kissing might be modified. 
 ''Modified!" exclaims the bouncing dairy-maid : 
 " What do you mean by modified! You were 
 young yourself once ! " " Yes, yes ; but lips 
 cannot last for ever." Therefore, one might 
 modify in this way : the valuable privilege might 
 be attached to every ten red ears, or something 
 of that sort 3 otherwise the kissing would cer- 
 tainly be beyond the endurance of mortal lips. 
 At any rate, with whatever risk to the lips, I 
 would have the frolics : hundreds of thousands 
 
XI.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 will cheerfully assist in this way, who would 
 sneak a mile in another direction rather than he 
 squatted down singly, or even in company, to 
 husking corn if you were called to work. Labour 
 is pain ; and nobody likes pain 5 and this is suf- 
 ficient to say upon the subject. So well is this 
 philosophy understood in America^ that there 
 they give the name o^ frolic to a great many 
 things, which we call work : the putting together 
 of the frame of a roof of a house or barn, they 
 call a raisinff frolic. Wlierever a considerable 
 number of persons are wanted to be working 
 together at the same thing, they call the affair 
 a frolic. The getting together of stones or 
 rocks, as they call them, to make the foundation 
 of a barn or a house, they call a rock frolic ; 
 and you will sometimes see forty or fifty wagons 
 and pairs of oxen or horses coming from all 
 parts of the neighbourhood, each bringing a 
 load of stones or rocks. This is, I may say, 
 always done, in case of a house building for a 
 new-married couple, especially if they be poor. 
 Some bring rocks, some lime, some sand, others 
 boards, others timbers, others shingles and 
 laths, while others are at work digging out the 
 foundation, building the walls, preparing the 
 frame ; and, in short, here is a house built in a 
 twinkling, and the owner of it, very frequently, 
 has it, without the cost to himself of any thing 
 
 N 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 but of the iron work. When I moved my tilings 
 from Long Island down to a house and piece of 
 land near New York, just before I came away, 
 there were ten neighbours, some with one and 
 some with two wagons, to do the job for me. 
 If there be any thing more amiable than this* 
 any thing that bespeaks a better people, I should 
 be glad that some one would describe it. But 
 it is the ease in which the people live that is 
 the great ca\ise of this neighbourly conduct; 
 the exactions of the government are so trilling, 
 the gvuspings of the miser and the usurer so 
 small comparatively; there are so few idlers to 
 live upon the fruits of the labour of the indus- 
 trious, that, with very few exceptions, every one 
 has something more than he wants ; and to keep 
 a people in this state is the first dutv of every 
 government; its very first duty; and it ougiit 
 to be the first aim of every statesman, who never 
 ought to close his eyes in quiet with the know- 
 ledge of the fact, that a considerable part of the 
 people are in want. 
 
 179- if some one, some precious monopolizer, 
 some favoured child of cent, per cent, with his 
 pen behind his ear and his book of interest tables 
 before him, should, rising up from his calculation 
 exclaim, "What a devil and allof money Cobbeit 
 will get by this corn !" some reader of the Regis- 
 ter, v.ho has a memory capable of a test of twenty- 
 
XL] CONCLUSION. 
 
 eight years, and who has gratitude that will not 
 quit his bosom while he has breath in his body, 
 might, in answer to the grinding caitiff, say, "And 
 " ivhy should not Cobbett get a devil and all of 
 " money by his corn ? He asks no remuneration 
 " out of the taxes^ no villanous profits upon a loan ; 
 " he goes not to the law to protect him in plunder- 
 " ing ; he resorts not to the more than half frauds 
 *' committed under the name of paper-money and 
 *' discounts ; he seeks not to gain by any means 
 '^ not at once fair, free from all ojjpression of anv 
 " body, and free from all those arts of delusion in 
 "which the foolish and credulous become the vic- 
 " tims of cunning knaves." 
 
 ISO. To this might be added, that when Mr. 
 ToLLE r, at Be'I'tley, near Newcastle-under-Line, 
 in Staffordshire, introduced the Winter Bean, 
 he sold his first crop at two shillings the quart. It 
 requires three bushels of these beans to plant an 
 acre ; so that Mr. Tollkt sold his seed, at 7iine 
 pounds twelve sJiiUings for seed sufficient to plant 
 an acre. Mr. Toli.et was and is a magistrate of 
 the county, a considerable landowner, and one 
 who must necessarily profit largely from every 
 means made use of to add to the general produce 
 of the soil. It is hardly necessary for me to say, 
 that, while I by no means envy Mr. Toilet, or 
 deem him to have made unjustifiable profit, I 
 have full as great a right, moral as well as legal, 
 N 2 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 to derive profit from being the inventor or intro- 
 ducer of something, an infinite number of 
 viiUlons of times better than any bean that ever 
 Avas grown ; because beans are good for no- 
 thing but for horses ; and because, unless the 
 nation should be smitten with universal insanity, 
 they never will be used for horses again after about 
 five years from this day, of which you will be 
 convinced when you have read my book. 
 
 181. Next year an acre of corn-seed will, 1 
 dare say, be to be bought for a few shillings; but, 
 even according to my price, this first year, when 
 every grain is so precious, pray make the com- 
 ])arison between corn and wheat ! To sow an 
 acre of wheat broadcast (and that is the 
 general way), I must have from three to four 
 bushels ; some sow one of these quantities, some 
 th.e other. I have heard of more than four, but 
 of never less than three. Let us take the average, 
 three and a half; good seer/ wheat is not now 
 to be got under fourteen shillings a bushel, at 
 the least; here, then, ^.xe forty nine shiUinys re- 
 quired to sow an acre of wheat, when the acre of 
 corn, even according to my price, costs, in seed, 
 only tJnrtTj tv:o shillings. 
 
 182. Such answer might suffice; but, such in 
 this case is not enough for me. I, not only seek 
 not to make money by watching the turn of the 
 market : but I seek not to make it even by inge- 
 
XI.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 nuity and doing things of real utility, to the ex- 
 clusion of the gain of others. I would scorn, if 
 I had the power, to confine the advantage to 
 myself. I leave the Peels, the Aukwrights, 
 the Watts, and the rest of that lucky tribe, to 
 monopolise the profits of their discoveries. I 
 leave to DocioK Jenner, to the Scotchman 
 Macada-M, and the like, not forgetting the 
 *' codification" Bentham, who was the discoverer 
 of a new mode of punishing harlots and thieves ; 
 I leave these to get parlia7neniary ffrants ; 1 leave 
 these to have their surprising genius and industry 
 rewarded by a Parliament such as that which we 
 have to take care of our money ; and, rather than 
 receive one farthing from that Parliament, or from 
 any ministry, be they who they might, I would be 
 smothered in the husks of my own beloved corn. 
 Never did these hands of mine touch, directly or 
 indirectly, one single farthingof the millions taken 
 from the people, whether under the name of taxes, 
 or anv other name, except the sixpence first, and 
 afterwards tlie two shillings, a-day that I received 
 during the time that 1 wore a red coat, and from 
 ivhich red-coat service I obtained my discharge 
 as a great favour, and on the express, ground, as 
 inserted in the discharge itself by the command 
 of my then commander Lord Edward Fitzgerald, 
 who signed my discharge ; on the express ground 
 that my wishes were gratified in consequence of 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 " the great services that I had rendered the regi- 
 ment," and that was .at the age of twenty-six 
 years. The Governor of the province gave me, 
 wlien I came away, or, rather, when the regiment 
 came awav, his thanks in public orders; though 
 he did the same to not one soul of the officers of 
 the regiment. I was so situated as to save to 
 England thousands and thousands of pounds dur- 
 ing the time tliat the regiment was staticmed in 
 New Brunswk'K. My vigilance was incessant; 
 and I pursued the interests of the government at 
 home, and, as I then thought, of the country at 
 home, with as much zeal as if my life had de- 
 pended upon the result. I could take my oath 
 that I never saw one other man that did the 
 same, while I was in that country, with the ex- 
 ception of Generai. Carleton, the Governor, 
 and the unfortunate Lord PjDavard Fitzgerald, 
 who was a really honest, conscientious, and hu- 
 mane man. 
 
 183. While I was in that province, a set of 
 Commissioners came out to take an account of 
 the population, of the condition of the seve- 
 ral settlements, of the state of the improvements, 
 and the like. These gentlemen sent home a very 
 long and luminous report, accompanied with a 
 set of tahles, giving a concise view of the whole 
 in figures. They ended their perambulations at 
 Fredericton, where my regiment was quar- 
 
XI.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 tered ; and they wanted somebody to assist them 
 in making out their report. Having dropped 
 this in the hearing of onr adjutant, who (I being 
 serjeant-major) was* my immediate superior, he 
 undertook at once to do the job for them. After 
 suitable apologies and thanks, I suppose, thev 
 accepted of his offer, and he, coming to nie with 
 a great confused bundle of their papers, borne 
 behind him by a soldier, said : " Cobbktt, here 
 " are these commissioners want somebody to 
 " make out their report for them ; I wish you 
 " would do it." I began to ask him how it was 
 to be done : " Oh ; G — d d — n me if I know, 
 '^ and I am sure they don't ; but, there, look at 
 " papers, and come to me by-and-bye." When 
 I think of the job which he imposed upon me, 
 and how very small part of a minute it would 
 noiv require to make me fling the papers out of 
 the window, or into the fire, and kick the appli- 
 cant out of the door, I am astonished that I had 
 the patience to wade through, to arrange, to read, 
 to analyse, and to obtain explanations relative to, 
 this heap of abominable rubbish. J did it not 
 only without reluctance but v\'ith delight, and it 
 cost me about thirty nights ; for I had full em- 
 ployment from the beating of tha I'eveille to that 
 of the tat-too. Very little sleep had I during 
 that time ; but, I made out the report and the 
 tables. They were sent home to the employers 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 of these commissioners ; and a copy, which I 
 made for the purpose, was deposited with the 
 Governor of Hahfux, which copy the Duke of 
 Kent had, in the year 1800, when he was 
 Commander in Chief in that Province, got from 
 the Governor as a curiosity to keep, on account 
 of the beauty of the writing and of the figures, 
 having hired a person to take a copy of it to 
 leave with the Governor. Another motive was, 
 because it was in my hand-writing. He showed 
 it to me at Halifax, v/hen I was there, on my 
 way from the United States to England in the 
 year ISOO. ^\^hen I told him the whole of the 
 story, he asked me how much the Commissioners 
 gave me ; and, when I told him not a farthing, 
 he exclaimed most bitterly, and said that thou- 
 sands of pounds had, first and last, been paid by 
 the country for what I had done. 
 
 184. I mention tiiis as only one instance among 
 many. I, uith nobody but the soldiers of the 
 regiment under me, and furnished with nothing 
 but tools and iron work, built a barrack, dug the 
 stones, burnt the lime, dug the sand, or, rather, 
 wheeled it up from the river ; built the chimneys, 
 cut the trees, sawed the boards and timber, split 
 the shingles, made the sashes for the windows ; 
 and with nothing given me but the iron work 
 and the glass for the windows, with these ex- 
 ceptions, we had nothing but the earth to look 
 
XI.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 to for materials ; and we built in two months 
 a very comfortable barrack for four hundred 
 men, without any architect; without any Mr. 
 Nash, or any body of that description. All the 
 officers, except one, went down to the city of 
 St. John, at more than a distance of a hundred 
 miles, and there they stayed. That one was 
 stationed along with me, in consequence of a 
 loadstone, that pulled him higher up the river ; 
 but never did I see his face, but once or twice, 
 during the whole time. The Governor, who was 
 a very early riser, used to come and see me 
 every morning ; and, as far as words went, gave 
 me ample reward in his constant commendations. 
 This sixpence a-day, and afterwards the two 
 shillings a-day; that is to say, sixpence a-day 
 for two years, and two shillings a-day for six 
 years ; make a total of two hundred and thirty- 
 seven pounds five shillings. This is all [ ever 
 received out of the taxes ; and I am quite 
 willing to allow that my services were worth 
 nothing to the country, for that such services 
 are of no real use to it ; and, as soon as I found 
 that out, which was very quickly, I begged and 
 prayed that I might cease those services. But, 
 I have PAID something to the country, as well 
 as received something from it ; I do not mean 
 those enormous taxes that I have paid in com- 
 mon with the rest of my countrymen ; but, 
 N 5 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 I mean a sum which I liave actually PAID to 
 THE KING; and the like of which, upon such 
 ground no Englishman ever paid before ; and 
 I am satisfied that no Englishman will ever pay 
 again. I allude, as my readers must have anti- 
 cipated, to the thousand of hard pounds, which 
 I paid in the year 1812, under the name of a 
 line, after two years of monstrous expenses and 
 of imprisonment, for that length of time, in a 
 felon's jail. This money I have demanded back 
 through the hands of the present ministry ; I 
 will demand it again and again as long as I have 
 life ; and I never will, wliile that life lasts, be 
 satisfied until I have obtained it. Since the 
 present ministry has been in power, I have peti- 
 tioned the King to give me back my money ; 
 and that those who are too young to have wit- 
 nessed the transaction, or to have had such a 
 knowledge of it as to be enabled to remember 
 it, shall upon this occasion hear the whole story, 
 that they may be able to form a judgment upon 
 it. They shall hear it, too, in a copy of that 
 petition itself, which I have recently presented 
 to the King, through the hands of the Secretary 
 of State. 
 
XI.] CO:VCLUSTO>'. 
 
 185. To His Most Qt'acious Majesty, George 
 the Fourth, King of the United Kingdom 
 of Great Britain and Ireland. 
 
 The Petition of William Cobbett, of 
 Kensington, in the County of Mid- 
 dlesex, 
 
 ]\Iost humbly shows, 
 
 186. That there Avas published in London, in the 
 
 year 1809, a newspaper called the " Courier," which 
 
 newspaper continues to be there published unto this 
 
 day; that, in this said newspaper was published, on 
 
 Saturday, the twenty-fourth day of June, 1809, a 
 
 piece of news, or intelligence, in the following words; 
 
 to wit ; 
 
 " The mutiny amongst the Loca I Militia, which broke 
 
 " out at Ely, was fortunately suppressed, on Wed- 
 
 " nesday, by the arrival oifour sgtiadrons of the 
 
 " German Legion Cavalry from Bury, under the 
 
 *' command of General Auckland. Five of the 
 
 " ringleaders were tried by a Court Martial, and 
 
 " sentenced to receive fve hundred lashes 
 
 " each, part of which punishment they received 
 
 " on Wednesday, and a part was remitted. A 
 
 " stop-page for their knapsacks was the ground 
 
 " of complaint that excited this mutinous spirit, 
 
 " which occasioned the men to surround their 
 
 " officers, and demand what tl.ey deemed their 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 " arrears. The first division of the German 
 " Legion halted yesterday at Newmarket, on 
 " tlieir return to Bury." 
 187. That your humble Petitioner published, at 
 the time here referred to, a work called the " Weekly 
 Politcal Register ;" that, on the first day of July, 
 1809, he inserted in the said work the above para- 
 graph from the Courier, and, that he, at the same time, 
 subjoined words of his own, expressive of great indig- 
 nation at the transaction ; but, words, conveying no 
 sentiment which he did not then think, and which he 
 does not now think, it became an Englishman to en- 
 tertain and express on such an occasion ; and, your 
 humble Petitioner is fully convinced, that if your 
 Majilsty were to be graciously pleased now to read 
 those words, taking all the circumstancesinto your con- 
 sideration; who the punished parties were, that they were 
 poor men whom a novel law had forced to quit their 
 homes, and to submit to military service ; that the law 
 had awarded a sum of money called the " marching 
 guinea ;" but knai'sacks had been given, or tendered 
 to them instead of the money; that, though, perhaps, 
 this might be for their own ultimate convenience and 
 good ; yet that, even if their claim had not been 
 strictly legal, their youth and inexperience ought, 
 your Petitioner is sure j'our Majesty would allow, to 
 have pleaded successfully in excuse for their conduct, 
 and ought (especially as they have been compelled to 
 assume the military garb), to have saved them from 
 
XL] CONCLUSION. 
 
 suffering punishment, severe in itself, and deemed 
 infamous by the law of the land. Your humble Peti- 
 tioner is fully convinced that, if your Majesty were 
 now to read those words, taking into consideration all 
 these circumstances, your Majesty would see in them 
 nothing that ought not to have proceeded from the 
 heart or the pen of an Englishman ; and, that 
 your Majesty would be able to discover in these 
 words nothing that ought to be deemed seditious or 
 libellous. 
 
 188. That, however, for having written and caused 
 to be published these words, your humble Petitioner 
 was prosecuted by an ex ojfficio information ; that he 
 was harassed with this prosecution for nearly a year; 
 that he was then brought to trial ; and that he was 
 then sentenced, first, to be imprisoned for two years 
 in the jail of Newgate ; second, to pay a thou- 
 sand pounds sterling at the end of the two years; 
 and, third, to be held in bonds of three thousand 
 pounds himself, with two sureties in a thousand 
 pounds each, to the end of seven years after the ex- 
 piration of the two years of imprisonment. 
 
 189. That, after the verdict had been given against 
 your Petitioner, he had just had time to return to his 
 alarmed family at seventy miles distance from London, 
 when he was brought back by a judge's warrant to 
 yive hail for his appearance to receive his sentence; 
 that, having appeared on the first day of term according 
 to the command of the warrant, he was at once com- 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 mitted to jail, and kept there until finally brought to re- 
 ceive his horrible sentence; and that (athing theretofore 
 wholly unheard of) his then printer, Thomas Han- 
 sard ; his then publisher, Richard Bagsiiaw; 
 and even a bookseller named John Budd, were all, 
 for the self-same cause, prosecuted in like manner, 
 and all punished by imprisonment ; so that, all persons 
 pursuing the business of printing, or that of publishing, 
 became terrified at the thought of printing or publish- 
 ing the writings of your humble Petitioner, who had 
 to endure many and great disadvantages arising from 
 this terror, which caused an augmentation in the 
 expense of putting forth his literary labours, and other 
 grievous injuries which he will not here enumerate. 
 
 190. That, your Petitioner, who had long lived in the 
 country at the time, and who had a wife, and a family 
 of six small children, was put into a part of the jail 
 allotted to felons and to persons convicted of ««- 
 natural crivies ; that, on the day after the imprison- 
 ment of your Petitioner commenced, one of the former 
 was taken out to be transported ; and, that, in a few 
 days later, several of the latter were taken out to be 
 placed in the pillory, and then brought back again to 
 endure imprisonment in the same place that had been 
 allotted to your Petitioner, but imprisonment, he 
 beseeches your Majesty to be pleased to observe, of 
 much shorter duration ! 
 
 191. That youi* humble Petitioner, in order to 
 avoid society like this, and to be able to avail himself 
 
XL] CONCLUSION. 
 
 of the consolation afforded by occasionally seeing his 
 
 virtuous family, obtained, through the intercession of 
 
 Gentlemen belonging to the Corporation of London, 
 
 leave to reside in the house of the Keeper, to whom 
 
 he paid for this indulgence, twelve pounds for every 
 
 week; amounting, in two years, to one thousand two 
 
 hundred and forty -eight pounds. 
 
 192. That, with any detail of the numerous other 
 
 expenses, losses, injuries, and mischiefs of endless. 
 
 Tarietj', attending these two 5'ears of imprisonment, 
 
 and the other parts of the merciless sentence, your 
 
 humble Petitioner will not presume to trouble your 
 
 Majesty ; but will conclude wdth, first, expressing his 
 
 gratitude to God for having preserved him and his 
 
 family, amidst all these terrible sufferings; and, next, 
 
 with appealing to the justice of your T-.Tajesty, whom 
 
 he humbly begs leave to remind, that, at the end of 
 
 these two years of pain and of ruin, he paid into the 
 
 hands of an officer of the crown, a thousand pounds 
 
 sterling, for the use of your P.Iajesty, whom he now 
 
 humbly prays to be graciously pleased to cause the 
 
 said thousand pounds sterling to be restored to him, 
 
 your Majesty's humble Petitioner and faithful and 
 
 dutiful subject, 
 
 W. COBBETT, 
 Kensington, 2i>th August, 
 
 1828. 
 
 193. Such was the statement of my case, 
 which I forwarded in the usual way to the Secre- 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 taiy of State, accompanied with a letter, a copy 
 of which I here insert together with a copy of 
 his answer, acquainting me with what the King 
 had been pleased to do upon the subject. 
 
 Kensington, 23d August, 1828. 
 SIR, 
 
 194. Having understood that it is not practica- 
 ble to petition the King, except through the hands 
 of the Secretary of State for the Home Department, 
 I send you, enclosed, a Petition, which I request you 
 to lay before his Majesty ; and, I further request that 
 you will be pleased to inform me, either by my son 
 (who is the bearer of this letter), or by some other 
 means most convenient to you, whether you think it 
 proper to lay the Petition before the King, and at, or 
 about, what time it will be done. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your most humble and 
 
 Most obedient Servant, 
 
 Wm. Cobbett. 
 To the Right Honourable Robert Peel. 
 
 Brighton, August 3Gth, 1828. 
 SIR, 
 
 195. I have to acknowledge the receipt of your 
 letter, of the 25th of August, and of a Petition to 
 the King, praying for the restoration of the sum of 
 
XJ.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 One Thousand Pounds, being the amount of a fine 
 imposed upon you by the sentence of a Court of Law, 
 in the year 1810. I have laid your Petition before 
 His Majesty, and have to acquaint you, that it 
 has been returned by His Majesty, without the signi- 
 fication of any commands. 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your obedient Servant, 
 
 Robert Pekl. 
 William Cobbett, Esq. 
 
 196. This was, to be sure, what I expected ; 
 but, it was right to make the demand, and to 
 make it in the manner in which it was made. If I 
 had had the money given back directly, it would 
 have produced no change either in my opinions 
 relative to any of the ])arties, or in my language 
 in speaking of them and their measures. I look 
 upon the money as my due : I say nothing aljout 
 compensation for sufferings, for losses, for ruin ; 
 for, if I were to speak of this, I should include 
 the consequences of the exile to America in 
 1817, occasioned by the power-of-miprisonment- 
 bill, which 1 always regarded, and which I still 
 regard, as principally intended for me. But the 
 tliousand pounds I paid to the King ; and to the 
 King I will, on all proper occasions, a])ply for 
 the money. At any rate, therefore, I owe the 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 nation nothing ; and nothing did I ever, or will 
 I ever, receive from it. 
 
 197. Not one man out of a hundred thousand, 
 possessing the talents and all the resources con- 
 tained in my healthy frame and sound mind ; 
 there is not one such man in a hundred thou- 
 sand, who would not, having the opportunities 
 that I have had, have abandoned his country long 
 ago; left it to its fate, and even, while lie was 
 enjoying honour and wealth elsewhere, been glad 
 to hear of its misery and disgrace; and, if occa- 
 sion offered, employ his talents in the service of 
 its enemies ; to justify all which I have received 
 a hundred times more than sufficient provocation. 
 I, on the contrary, have foregone the greatest of 
 pecuniary advantages, and regarded wealth as no- 
 thing when put in competition with my duty to 
 my country. While I saw around me, even dur- 
 ing my last residence in America, scores of most 
 " loyaV Englishmen, swallowing, without the 
 least remorse, an oath, abjuring their allegiance ; 
 I remained firm to mine ; and so scrupulous was 
 I upon this point, that I declined being intro- 
 duced to tlie then president, Mr. Monro, when 
 he visited New York in 1S17; and 1 even de- 
 clined making one of a party at the house of an 
 excellent neighbour in Long Island, because 
 the Governor of the State, Mr. Clinton, was to 
 be of tliat party. I had a very great respect for 
 
XI.] CONCLUSION. 
 
 both these gentlemen ; both of theni were worthy 
 of all the respect that man can entertain for man. 
 I should have deemed it a greater honour to have 
 been introduced to them than to all the Prime 
 IMinisters that 1 have ever known in England ; 
 but I was resolved to do nothing that could pos- 
 sibly be construed into a desire on my part to be 
 in favour with those, who, in the due discharge 
 of their duty to their country, must of necessity 
 entertain a desire to lessen the pov,-er of mine. 
 
 198. I had not forgotten, nor have I yet for- 
 gotten, nor shall I ever forget or forgive, the 
 treatment which I have received from persons in 
 power in England. But, they are not England', 
 they are not my country ; my country is un- 
 happy, in misery, sinking in character, and it is 
 my duty to endeavour to restore her to her 
 former state ; and, in the meanwhile, to do her 
 all the good that I can, consistent with my own 
 preservation and that of my family ; but, above 
 all things, it is my duly, possessing as I do, an 
 unusual portion of that sort of knowledge, calcu- 
 lated, if properly applied, to better the lot of the 
 labouring classes ; and, possessing also the means 
 of communicating that knowledge extensively; it 
 is my duty, a duty next to that which I owe to my 
 own flesh and blood, to communicate it, and that, 
 too, in a way the most likely to be efficient. The 
 most useful piece of knowledge of this tendency, 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 that T ever possessed, was that relating to the 
 Corn-plant ; but, it was a sort of knowledge 
 which, to make the communication of it effectual^ 
 required example as well as precept, and an ex- 
 ample, too, upon an unequivocal scale. A field, 
 and a large field, was necessary. I could get no 
 such field without taking a farm ; a farm at this 
 time must he a terrible loss to me, if at any thing 
 of distance from London ; and on the spur of 
 tlic moment, where was I to get a farm near 
 London? This farm was to be let; I took it; 
 and, thus, the outlay, the risk (if risk there were), 
 and whatever there has been of care and labour, 
 and expending of time, have been encountered 
 from a sense of duty towards the numerous and 
 now unhappy class that perform the labours of 
 the country ; and, I repeat, that it was my duty 
 to do this, if I had the power to do it without 
 wjury to my family. 
 
 199. And, here let me me offer an observation 
 OT two respecting the extent to which a man 
 ought, in such a case, to be restrained by these 
 considerations of family. It is every man's 
 duty to provide, if he be able, a sufficiency for 
 his family; and that sufficiency is not to be in- 
 terpreted to mean merely food, raiment, and 
 lodging sufficient to feed and to cover and shelter 
 the parties ; but, every other thing, in addition, 
 suitable and in due proportion to that state of 
 
XL] conclusion:. 
 
 life in which the children have been bred up ; 
 for, a man has no right to gratify his own vanity 
 or pride by dressing up his children in fine clothes, 
 by causing them to be waited on by servants, by 
 causing them to ride in carriages, and, then, 
 when they are grown up, to say to them, " icork 
 for yourselves, as I have done ; for I have no 
 fortunes to give you." He has no right to do 
 this : he should not have indulged his vanity or 
 pride by doing that which rendered them un- 
 fitted for beginning the world as he began it. 
 Still less is he justifiable, be he in what state of 
 life he ma}', if he, being able to prevent it, 
 suffer his family to experience actual ivant of 
 any thing necessary to their nourishment and 
 health: for, Saint Paul says, " If any /irovi^ 
 " not for his own, and especially for those of his 
 " own house, he hath denied the faith, and is 
 " worse than an infidel." But, hy jjroviding for 
 his own, it is by no means meaned, that, when 
 a man earns, or, from whatever source, possesses, 
 more than is sufficient for a Just and suitable 
 provision, he is not called upon for works of 
 charity, or, for acts of duty towards his country ; 
 that is to say, acts, in the benefits of which his 
 neighbours, his countrymen, and particularly his 
 poorer neighbours and countrymen are to share. 
 *' Family," " wife and children," his duty towards 
 these, is the standing excuse of every grinding, 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 grasping, greedy, selfish, unfeeling married knave 
 in every country, who has eternally on his lips, 
 " charity begins at home ; " an interpretation of 
 the above precept of Saint Paul, vi'hich inter- 
 pretation was certainly found out by the Devil. 
 Ask such a fellow to give to the poor ; ask him to 
 goto a public meeting; ask him to sign a petition 
 against any act of tyranny or cruelty ; ask him to 
 assist, merely by writing liis name, or saying aye 
 or no, in procuring redress of any grievance, 
 thouoh he himself suffer from it in common with 
 the rest of the people ; ask him any of these, 
 and the answer of the creature is : " / have 
 a ivife and family." " I have sixteen children^ 
 Mr. Cobbett," said the late Sir Henry Mjld- 
 MAV to me, when I was, in 1807, urging him to 
 make great efforts in Hampshire to oppose 
 the perfidious Whig Ministry's tools : " those, 
 then," said I, " Sir, are sixteen reasons in 
 addition to all that I have urged, for your 
 making the exertion." Now, this was by no 
 means a man destitute of public spirit or of 
 generositv, and was very much beloved by his 
 tenants and l)y all the people who lived near 
 him ; vet, even he could plead wife and family, 
 who, God knows, were in no other danger than 
 such as might possibly arise from their having 
 too much. There was a corporal in our regi- 
 ment, who J having sacked two or three farm- 
 
XL] CONCLUSIOX. 
 
 houses, or rather, rohhed them, in the American 
 war, and having kept the proceeds, was the mess- 
 man and (jrog- seller, being able to give our " gal- 
 lant" officers trust. Tiiis fellow's goat having- 
 three she kids, of which, during her gestation, he 
 had most solemnly promised me one, I, when the 
 goats were fit to take away, claimed the fulfil- 
 ment of his promise ; and, having called him to go 
 with me to make delivery, I, out of three she 
 goats (there was a he besides) fixed upon the 
 finest : " A dad !" said he, '"' ihui's Tommy's" 
 (his eldest child about thi'ee years old). " Well, 
 then," said 1, " I'll take this." " A dad and 
 a dad ! " said he, " that's poor little Billy's" 
 (who was in arms), and the dear child will cry 
 his eyes out." " Well, then," said I, " here, 
 give me the little one." " Upon mv soul," said 
 he, " that's Nancy's (his wife), and, yoii know 
 that / da7'e not give that away ! " I did happen 
 to know that ; but, I also knew, tliat slie did 
 dare, and dared to give Tommy's and Billy's 
 away into tlie bargain. Accordingly I addressed 
 myself to " Nancy," who was a great deal 
 younger than the mess-mari, and much too liberal 
 to adhere very rigidly to tlie doctrine of charity 
 being confined to home. " The great fool ! " 
 said she ; " go, Serjeant-IMajor, and take them 
 all, if you like ;" which I instantly did, keeping 
 the finest, and giving the other two away to a 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. 
 
 friend, in the city of Saint John, who wanted 
 some goats, to keep. 
 
 200. This fellow's conduct is an epitome of 
 til at widely spread selfishness which is practised, 
 not only without hlushing, but with boasting, 
 under the pretence of taking care of icife and 
 family, which forms the sole defence of thou- 
 sands upon thousands of monopolisers, extor- 
 tioners, peculators, userers, and misers ; who, ob- 
 serve, are, all this while, only gratifying their own 
 avaricious disposition, and who resort to the wife 
 and family, to the petticoat and the cradle, to 
 hide the real truth from the world. When I used 
 to tell the young fellows, in Hampshire, who 
 wanted to get out of paying for " love children," 
 that they were " worse that infidels," and they 
 used to answer, that they had done nothing so 
 very rare, I used to say, that it was the not pro- 
 viding for their ovm which constituted the great- 
 est part of the crime ; and here, if they had read 
 the pension and sinecure list, as I had, they might 
 have triumphantly cited the example of their 
 betters ; for, in those lists, there are ivhole broods^ 
 mother and children, females as well ds males, 
 foisted upon the people for support ! These 
 " higher orders" do not, I suppose, regard Sajnt 
 Paul as having written /or them; for they abso- 
 lutelv reverse the precept, and not only do not 
 provide for their own, but make others, and 
 
XL] CONCLUSION. 
 
 amongst those others, the^oor, do it for them ; like 
 the cuckoo, which lays its egg in the hedge- 
 sparrow's nest, and makes the poor little thing 
 feed the intruder, until, as soon as of beak and 
 swallow sufficient, it devours the nurse herself. 
 
 201. Such are my notions relative to the du- 
 ties of a man towards his family. He is to pro- 
 vide for them in an adequate, just, and suitable 
 manner; but he is not to neglect his duties, not 
 at all less sacred, towards his neighbours and his 
 country, especially when it is considered, that his 
 family shares, too, in the benefit resulting from 
 the discharge of these duties. He is to provide 
 for his family if he be able, but, amongst the 
 causes of inabUliy, he is to reckon the necessity 
 of preserving his character; the necessity of ex- 
 pending time or money, or both, in order to serve 
 his country, or to advance his own honest and 
 fair fame, or to avenge himself on his cruel or 
 unjust enemies ; for no " flesh and blood " have 
 a claim upon him sufficiently strong to make it 
 his duty to abandon any one of these; nor have 
 they a claim upon him so strong as to justify him 
 in withholding relief from the necessitous, or in at 
 all pinching the labourer in his hire ; or, in short, 
 to justify him in committing any act of covetous- 
 ness, or even of meanness. 
 
 202. By these principles I have always been 
 actuated myself, and I have constantly endea- 
 
 o 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap, 
 
 voured to inculcate them amongst my readers in 
 general, and more especially amongst my children, 
 to those amongst whom, whose sex warrants the 
 hope, I trust their country may look with confidence 
 for the performance of duties, such as those, the 
 performance of which have occupied so large a 
 part of the life of tiieir father. This day (21st 
 November) 1 have not only received a parcel of 
 PAPER, made of the hnsks of my Co7it; but, 
 have sent it to have printed on it ihe title page 
 of this vei'-y book ! You, my friends (readers of 
 the Register), when you hear my and your malig- 
 nant, or stupid, calumniators affecting to jeer at 
 my undertakings, may now hold the PAPER up 
 to their eyes, or cram an ear of the CORN into 
 their distended jaws, taking care, however, of your 
 own hands at the same time. To wish that Pitt, 
 Dundas, Perceval, Ellenborough, Gibbs, Castle- 
 reagh, and Canning, or either of them, were alive 
 is far from my heart, even for the purpose of wit- 
 nessing this triumph of mine; nor would I, though 
 for the same purpose, wish the stern-path-of-duty 
 man to be, in the least, disturbed in his retreat; 
 but, if there be any of the jolterheads of Hamp- 
 shire, whether in grey coats or black, who have 
 not yet been, by the " hard times " or by their 
 own baffled pride and humbled insolence, driven 
 to cut their own throats, as Castlereagh did his at 
 North Cray, in Kent ; and who used, while they 
 
XL] CONCLUSION. 
 
 saw me stripped by the government, to affect to 
 believe, and to endeavour to make others believe, 
 that 1 had been ruined by my foolish farming, 
 which they used to call my " FARMING 
 CROCHETS:" if there be any of these brutes 
 of unprovoked malignity with throats yet uncut, 
 I do wish, that a full ear of my Corn were cram- 
 med, whole, down each of those uncut throats : 
 or, which would be about the same thing to them, 
 I wish that the brutes could be prevented from 
 planting the corn ! That would be the appro- 
 priate punishment! 
 
 203. In conclusion, my friends, let me say once 
 more, that the greater share of the merit of this 
 enterprise belongs, as I before said, to my eldest 
 SON : and I cannot take my leave of the interest- 
 ing subject in any way more congenial with my 
 own feelings, and I trust, pleasing to you, than 
 by inserting here the letter from him, to the 
 King's gardener, accompanying the Master-plant, 
 mentioned in a former part of this book. 
 
 Kensington, 8th November, 1828. 
 SIR, 
 Along with this note, I have tlie honour to send 
 you a corn plant, which I have taken from my 
 father's field at Barn Elm, It has six full ears 
 of corn; and, you will see, that (it was by acci- 
 dent) one was broken off. If it had still had seven, 
 
CONCLUSION. [Chap. XI. 
 
 the number would have been that of the " one 
 Btalk" mentioned in Pharaoh's dream of the seven 
 years of plenty. As to the gardener of my Sovereign, 
 I send you this plant, hoping that, during the reign of 
 His Majesty, and the reigns of all his royal successors, 
 England may be blessed with that plenty, which the 
 general cultivation of this plant is calculated con- 
 stantly to ensure, 
 
 I am, Sir, 
 
 Your most humble and 
 
 Most obedient Servant, 
 
 Wm. Cobbett, Juq. 
 To William Acton, Esq. 
 
 Royal ^Botanical Garden, Kew. 
 
 Printed by Mills, Jorvett, and Mills, Bolt Court, Fleet Street 
 
9