heavy soil tending to produce flint--light soil,
gourd seed.

The corn is "cut up" in the fall, and after curing in the shuck, is
husked; the shuck remaining on the stalk with the blades.

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

In Arkansas, Indian corn is regarded as the "king of grains." It
constitutes the chief food of every animal, from man down to the
marauding rat, while its dried blade furnishes seven-tenths of the
long food for working animals. The _large white_ is the variety most
esteemed, and most generally cultivated, for the reasons that it
yields more grain and fodder, makes, when ground into meal, whiter and
sweeter bread, and is less liable to injury from the weevils. The
blade is usually esteemed the best long food for horses, exceeding in
price the best Northern hay; the average price may be stated at about
seventy cents per cwt. The shuck is fed to cows and young mules, they
eat it, but with less relish than they do the blades, which are
sweeter and more nutritious. The former are much used for mattresses,
being preferred to moss, as they are cleaner, and easier manufactured.
When mixed with coarse cotton, and properly prepared, they will make a
mattress but little inferior to curled hair: price about fifty cents
per cwt. The average price of this grain may be set down at forty
cents per bushel; and the yield on upland in some parts of the State
may be stated at thirty bushels per acre.

Five varieties of maize are grown in Peru. One is known by the name of
_chancayano_, which has a large semi-transparent yellow g