The Express.
London, England, 1849-10-30 00:00:00

THE PXPRESS, TUESDAY EVENING, OCTOBER 30, 1849.:

CULTIVATION OF THE FORTY•DAY MAIZE.

The Saab Advertiser gisse a report of tits mulling
of the Both y Farmers' Club, last week, where Mr. Keene
made the following remarks en the cultivation of the forty-
day Raise :
Mr. Keens was warmly applauded. He had before him
newness spasinasse of Indian sera sad forty-day maize, is
cobs, rams, and shelled-out samples, grown in Almeri
Berbodoes, the meth of Freese, Midden; Hampahlee, sad
Mhos places. The forty-day mains which had been collie
SAM et Bitters*, near Southampton, by Sir Edward Bathe,
sad W Mr. Compland, in e*section with Mr. LIMO. we.
dadiledly the best of thewWe lot, whether as repodol tho
ildrisem of the cobs, mitigates sad quality el*, Webs or
Neal and the Bitterne mares, as well se them hem St
igenses-park, were thoreeghly ripened, sad the gibs ware
Mgvdar y garnished with grain from base to apex. TIN di&
demos in kiadawas apparent in most of the seraphs ; yet the
similarity of the grain of the Berbadoes to that of the forty
day was so great that the nexperieneed •y• Gould not detest
the difference, although it would sot came Sordoni= here
even in the most favourable seasons. The speaker
said h. had been a traveller, and in the wares
of his residence abroad he Lad had much rut-
tiest experknes fa the cultivation of main, sad these'.
etances—oae la particular, the failure of the potato crop
—bad led Mira to pay attention to it as an article of food to
be cultivated la England. In the first plan, perhaps, it
agent be asked how he became so intimately acquainted witb
maize ? He maid tell them. He was a miner, and having
had the taking of traces of land abroad, in the Basque pro-
vinces, when the maize was the chief article of soon among
the p. smutty, and as that land, from its peculiar, and he
might almost say is regard to toms 01 it, frosts sterile nature,
would grow nothing so well as maize, sad as he could farm
better for kismet than anybody could farm for him, he keit
it ia his cows hands ; and for the lest tbree or four ran had
devoted a great deal of tiase and armlike' to the various
kinds. ia order, if possible, by selection of °congenial sorts,
and adopting a tree= of itybridatioo, to produce a variety
suitable to the climate of the teensy so that Inca.. of a
failure is one description of food there should be another to
fall bath upon. In Spain then were sassy varieties of maize
—about a bemired and thirty • and the qualities were u
various as the varieties, molest On various sorts were applied
to different purposes, ens being retained for human food,
another for end* a third for poultry, sad so ca. It was
generally tows trim the 16th of April to the 10th of Jun,
bet he was ceolident that the best time fur sowing it In Bag-
land was from the 10th to the 25th te May. Teat was the time
of aeries in the Pyroners,and the climate was there much like
that of the south of Eoelaad. He thought teat they might
not to risk putting it into the ground before that time, is
consequence of the danger of frosts. The seed he had brought
with him to England was an of that kind usually grown
in the Pyrenees, for it had been his study to prelates e
mails of more rapid growth, so that it might attain remo-
tion after tie usually late frosts in England. One of the
sorts was known generally as " chicken's coon," from the
circutiotacee of its being given to chickens for food, but it
was worthless as an article kr hums food. Now, the forty-
day mans W.!e the often severe no,t of our springs better
t- an the other sorts with which they were acquainted. That
he might venture to assert without fear of contradiction ; it
had been grown this year with success, although under con-
siderable difficulties, at Putney, in Middlenz, in Sc. James's.
peak, Loudon, ea the estate of Sir Edward Butler, at Bit-
erne in their own district, and by 3.: r. Cou,,land, deo at Bit
temp. The cob he then held in his head wu grown by tb.
latter; it had been sown at the extreme limit of the season,
on the 23rd May, nevertheless it had attained a perfection of
growth superior to the cultivation of the Lynne's. It was
in fact a beautiful specimen from a field of corn as fins &zany
be had seen is the district from whence be brought the seed.
The next samples he had to exhitdt were grown In the same field,
but they varied in colour ; yet still they were of the kill-
day variety. These specimens were far superior to the cote
he would now show to them, which were grown last year in
the Pyrenees, and were regarded in that part of the world
as excellent samples. This was a point well worthy of their
attention, because i: was a convincing and undeniable proof
that the temperate climate of England was more congenial
I to its nature and more calcula•ed to mature it then the occa-
sional parching heat of the turd-day run in the Basque pro-
Tante, which often checked the growth of the plant. 1 hat,
as be said before, was an important fact, and worthy of their
consideralloo, from the eireamstanes of our climate being
more suitable to tie nature of the forty-day mane which he
had eatneeded in producing: the robs were liner in every
resin t. and the corn tn,re perfect.
The CHAIRMAN —Certainly, judging front the epeci •
mans, that seems to be the cues.
Mr. KEENE—Then is no room to doubt the fact ; the
matter is self-evident on a very causal inspection indeed.
That was a great pint gained. something beyond actual ex-
pectation, in fact, and to be accounted re, not so much on
the eroond of cultivation perhaps, for there had been diffi-
culties in that respect (to be remedied in future trials he
hoped), bat on the more important ground of our climate
b. tug sound to be suitable for its perfect growth. Thus,
then. having sufficieutly establiabed the fact that the forty-
day maize can be suoneshally ripened in our average
summer month., the nest point for conaldention was the
mode of @owlet. He had already alluded to the time for
depositing the seed in the soil; and again he ask d them
to take hie advice in this matter, anti sow from the lOth
to the 25th of May. Depend upon it that was the
beet time in this part of Europe. He bad told them
that particular districts In the Basque provinces grew their
particular sorts, and they bad goon and substantial reasons
to off, r in favour of their local preferences ; it was to them •
Matter of vied imp,rtance, for it was their °hitt nourish-
sent : its cultivation nib them had b-en a practice of ages;
and they would not hear of sorts beoughtfrom other climates,
hotter t r colder, from India or from North America. Their
sass seuiud their particular districts, and to these they name
firmly and faithfully adhered. Apply this, then, to Mis-
lead : he bad brought them a sort suitable to the climes*,
and the mode of culture was this. In choosing a spot let it
be as free from abide as povible' with no high trees ; sad
an exposure to the east and south east was preferable. Let
them open furrows, like those f planting potatoes, about
five or six inches deep and twenty-Ai: inches apart—that was
or say, twenty-six inches from farrow to furrow. Then let
them drop is the maize as they would French beans; then
tnrow ov r 'he seed in the furrow some welt-reties manure,
and finish by covering up with not M. 141 than two inches of
'tab, making all level. After about eight days' sowing the
pleat would make its appearance above ground, and when
about tan iitehes high—that was to say, strong and well op
also.* the ground—it should have its first hoeing, or
"trilling up, exactly as they would potatoes. If two or
three plants came up together, let them root up or break
off the w.aksst. They Wok' now be left till nearly three
feet Malt, except that, where they appeared too thick, they
might day by day, as wanted, pass along each row and pull
up the surplus plants till what they lett stood at about ten
inches distance, paying attention to remove, in preference,
throe that did net appear to be fanning their end lobe.
NOW, these surplus plants formed excellent and sweet ford
for harm d cattle In particular, and they were consumed
with avidity. They would next, when about three test
idb, give the second hoeing, earthing them up well,
but especial care should be taken not to fill with earth
th s eye of the phut, but this had more pull-
, ruler reference to the first hoeing, when the plant was
in its dwarfish state; for this reason—it the eye of the plant
got filled with earth, and rain followed, the chances wars
that it would rot away in the qqe. In lull summer the plant
would rapidly advance, eepedatly after tbe second hoeing,
and about the fortieth day they would find some of them
first beginning to path out their Bawer-stalks. The bead of
the mail', as many of them knew, :brew out a drooping
feather, sad the dropping of the dust from the flower upon
the feather impresesen the seed-head, and made it yitl t its ,
iull gran. Nrw, as the feather died, so as to crumble, and
a yellow east in the leaves indicated that the sep had began
its descent from the flower-stalk, they should pass along the I
rows and cut off this fin weestalk at an inch or two above the
first point over the seed-bead. Tea days after the lower'.
INV'S Shetld be stripped off, sad the gob aloe, left upon the
stalk to ripen. Both the tope and leaves formed ezimilimt
food for est:le. The Barbadoes pant was a perfect *tura
it its way; bat then, after ill, instead of forty, it would
t eke at least a hundred and forty of our summer days to
produce its lower alone—that is to say, .1 all the plans ot
tn. Berbadoes sort sown in the Perk only one head tame I
into filweAr, when the forty-day maize was ripe and St to
harvest. He came next to speak of the use of Th.
Mexicans extracted a spirit from it which they called eta*.
In the Basque provinces they had many preparations of it,
end if properly preps,. d as bread to thought the 'shearers
of Britain would soon take to it as food.
Mr. WYATT—It will not do in England; it might do
foe pigs. but 'arming men would not take to it.
Mr. EEENE—WeII, that was :alter a broad assertion.
Now, Roc, • few facts to meet it. It was a preferred food
in very wide and livelong districts on the Continent. tip.
grown men, hard-workers, women, and children, looked to
it with fondness as their chief hood. The food of the great
Landes w,s millet; but of late piss ibe culture of maize
had bete Introduced ; and the Baron d'Hausses, one of the
most distinguished French agriculturists, and for some
time prefect, or chief lentil nosey of the department
of the Landis, thus wrote in 1829, d scribing the con-
sequent of et in the cheese in the health of the popula-
tion, from actual observations, be it remembered, whilst
going through the depot taken when controlling the recruit-
ing of the army : The population of this department
resents a marked improvement in their physical condition
of which we ean follow up the traces in omen:lag the old
men to the yowl' of the t resent day. The old are short, this,
and rickety formed, whilst the youths are tall, wall-formed,
and rgetie bearing ; and the interval which separates
the ages offers classes of men Coding to a strongth and form
which tan only be explained by the progress the isnot eosin
has made in the food of the people, and it is in the mead
generation that the effects bac one strikingly apperent."
Mr. Keene then spoke of the safaris of the plant. In the
at place, it eun'ained saccharine matter for the production
of sugar, although not in quite so irreat a proportion as beet.
Its presence was reterind by Parini trier in 1781, but be
mid not certain. it; but in 1835 and 1836 the French Royal
Atadenty of S knee was remote d with cryrallised auger by
Dr. Falls Simples tram different toils were found by cif-
forint ehemistii to contain 75 to 77, 80, and 81 per cent. of
starch, ant 41 per ant. of water, and 10 per nat. only of
Sugar. 4401b'. of stalk gva 391bs. of cinders, tootainlng
13ibs. of alkali in different combies ions of potash, and only
traces of phosphates tad silica. Hers were the stetisticnl
facts in regard to the la ports of max- in seed-grain and in
meal :—Io 1840 the importation was 23,333 qearters of mese
and 14 cwt. of meal, and in 1843 it lowered to 20,726 quarters
of corn ; but in 1846 .he importation was to the extent of
706,806 qrs. of cern, and 131,809 cwt. of meal ; and in the
year following the amount was equal to one-half of our
importation of all kinds of grain, or 3,614,637 quarters ,
of core, and 1,451 010 cert meal. now we were to com-
pere t':e importation returns for the last three months of
July, rennet, and S'nt.mber, with tbe llama months of the
year before, we shell find that the menthe of this leer present