Note 113 — Chapter XXIV

An ear of corn, in most parts of Ireland, England, and Scotland, and other parts of Europe, is deemed a great curiosity, and is carefully preserved, when it can be procured, for a number of years by some families as a shew of a singular production of nature, and is as much admired and as closely examined as would be here the shoe of a Chinese lady of quality. A young Irish gentleman tells me, when a boy in Ireland he once carried a corn cob fourteen miles in his pocket to shew it to his relatives, who viewed it as a great curiosity from America, and could form no just idea of the manner of its growing, or of its utility, but concluded it grew like oats or barley, and like these were cut with sickles or scythes. The cob had been previously stripped of its grains by as many individuals, each taking one, as a sight of singular curiosity for their families and neighbourhood.—Cramer.