These facts ought to be very helpful to us next year when our fathers are planting corn. We should get them to plant seed secured only from stalks that produced the most corn, whether the stalk had two or more ears or only one. If we follow this plan year by year, each acre of land will be made to produce more kernels and hence a larger crop of corn, and yet no more work will be required to raise the crop. In addition to enlarging the yield of corn, you can, by proper selection of the best and most productive plants in the field, grow a new variety of seed corn. To do this you need only take the largest and best kernels from stalks bearing two ears; plant these, and at the next harvest again save the best kernels from stalks bearing the best ears. If you keep up this practice with great care for several years, you will get a vigorous, fruitful variety that will command a high price for seed. =EXPERIMENT= [Illustration: FIG. 55. IMPROVEMENT OF CORN BY SELECTION Boone County white corn on left, and original type, from which it was developed by selection, on right] Every school boy and girl can make this experiment at leisure. From your own field get two ears of corn, one from a stalk bearing only one ear and the other from a stalk bearing two well-grown ears. Plant the grains from one ear in one plat, and the grains from the other in a plat of equal size. Use for both the same soil and the same fertilizer. Cultivate both plats in the same way. When the crop is ready to harvest, husk the corn, count the ears, and weigh the corn. Then write a short essay on your work and on the results and get your teacher to correct the story for your home paper. SECTION XX. WEEDS Have you ever noticed that some weeds are killed by one particular method, but that this same method may entirely fail to kill other kinds of weeds? If we wish to free our fields of weeds with the greatest ease, we must know the nature of each kind of weed and then attack it in the way in which we can most readily destroy it. [Illustration: FIG. 56. PIGWEED] The ordinary pigweed (Fig. 56) differs from many other weeds in that it lives for only one year. When winter comes, it must die. Each plant, however, bears a great number of seeds. If we can prevent the plant from bearing seed in its first year, there will not be many seeds to come up the next season. In fact, only those seeds that were too deeply buried in the soil to come up the previous spring will be left, and of these two-year-old seeds many will not germinate. During the next season some old seeds will produce plants, but the number will be very much diminished. If care be exercised to prevent the pigweed from seeding again, and the same watchfulness be continued for a few seasons, this weed will be almost entirely driven from our fields.