The many excellent properties of Indian corn, as a wholesome nutritious food, and the rich fodder obtained from the stalk and leaf for the nourishment of cattle, invite more earnest attention from the farmer and planter in the Colonies to its better and extended cultivation.
Though the average quantity of grain from each acre in the United States is not more than thirty or forty bushels, yet it is known that with due care and labor 100 to 130 bushels may be obtained.
In feeding cattle little difference is discoverable between the effects of Indian corn meal and oil-cake meal; the preference rather preponderates in favor of the latter.
Corn cobs, ground with the grain, have advocates, but this food is not relished, and swine decline it.
Indian corn contains about the same proportion of starch as oats (sixty per cent.), but is more fattening, as it contains about nine or ten per cent. of oily or fatty ingredients.
The following analysis of maize is given by Dr. Samuel David, of Massachusetts:—
| FLESH FORMING PRINCIPLES. | |
| Gluten, albumen, and casein | 12.60 |
| FAT FORMING PRINCIPLES. | |
| Gum, sugar, starch, woody fibre, oil, &c. | 77.09 |
| Water | 9.00 |
| Salts | 1.31 |
| 100. | |
Prof. Gorham, in "Thomson's Organic Chem.," published in London in 1838, gives another analysis:—
| Fresh grain. | Dried grain. | |
| Water | 9.00 | |
| Starch | 77.00 | 84.60 |
| Gluten | 3.00 | 3.30 |
| Albumen | 2.50 | 2.74 |
| Gum | 1.75 | 1.92 |
| Sugar | 1.45 | 1.60 |
| Loss | 5.30 | 5.84 |
| 100. | 100. |
Professor Johnston supplies a table, which, he says, exhibits the best approximate view we are yet able to give of the average proportion of starch and gluten contained in 100 lbs. of our common grain crops as they are met with in the market.