Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1873 [PAGE 181]

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E. H. Singleton, Observer of the Signal Service, XL S. A., is expected toYgive an address, at one or more points, explanatory of the advantages to the farmer of the meteorological observations made by that Bureau. Dr. Wm. LeBaron, State Entomologist, will lecture upon "Entomology." Dr. E. S. Hull, it is hoped, will be able to talk, at one or more places of those named, upon Horticultural topics. Thomas J. Burrill, Professor of Horticulture, will open discussions upon "The Treatment of Soils" and "The Propagation of Plants." Judge A. M. Brown, of the Board of Trustees, will give an address upon "Orchard Management." Don Carlos Taft, Professor of Geology and Zoology, will lecture upon "The Origin and Nature of Soils and Coals." J. R. Scott, of the Board of Trustees, will speak upon "Feeding Stock." Joseph F. Carey, Professor of Ancient History, Languages and Arts, will give an address upon "Plows and Plowing." B. F. Johnson, Illinois Correspondent of the Country Gentleman, will lecture upon "Something More than Corn and Something Better than Oats." W. C. Flagg, Corresponding Secretary of the Board of Trustees, will giye addresses upon "The Agriculture of Illinois in the Census of 1870," upon "How to Make an Orchard,' and upon "Rings, or the Combinations against the Farmer." H. K. Yickroy, Orchardist and Gardener,, will talk upon "Timber Growing; and How to make a Nursery." E. L. Lawrence, Head Farmer, will speak upon "Rearing and Feeding Cattle." J. M. GREGORY, Regent. W. C. FLAGG, dor. Sao'y.

SOMETHING MOEE THAN COEN, AND SOMETHING BETTEE THAN OATS.

BY B. F.. JOHNSON, OF CHAMPAIGN.

Mr. President^ Ladies and Gentlemen: 4 One year ago I read before the students of the Illinois Industrial University, and before several conventions similar to this one, a somewhat lengthy paper on "Indian Corn—its varieties, their cultivation and use." That paper had for its main object how to improve the corn crop—how to get three bushels where we formerly got two, and how not only to make a wide and general increase in the yield, but also how its consumption might be enlarged and extended. These seemed to be very desirable and legitimate things to be done, for until the year 1872 we had all of us believed the larger we could make the corn crop, the better should we be entitled to the thanks of farmers and the wide and general gratitude of the country. But the corn and oat crops of 1872 seemed to have changed all previous conception of such great and abounding yields, and we begin to understand and to have the fact brought forcibly home to us, that there may be, under an artificial state of society, such a thing as the over-production of corn, even, and that for the farmer's profit there may be, also, too many cattle, hogs, horses and —23