COUNTY EEPOETS. 489 



barley. Barley is preferable, since it is the more profitable of 

 the two, and wheat, especially on our prairie land, is more liable 

 to the blight when it immediately follows corn, than if one year 

 intervenes. In the openings perhaps it would be better to let 

 wheat follow corn. 



The variety of barley best suited to our locality is the six- 

 rowed. This is a tender grain and requires more skill in its 

 successful cultivation than any other cereal. Don't sow it on 

 low land, or on any but land under fine tilth. It should be cut 

 before fully ripe and stacked as soon as dry, in order to retain 

 its color, which in the idea of our buyers is a matter of positive 

 value. When barley is threshed the weather should be dry, so 

 that the straw, which is valuable for feeding young stock, may 

 be well stacked. If handled in damp weather it absorbes damp- 

 ness, and its value is very much diminished. 



Wheat, according to Prof. Liebeg, exhausts the soil in a ratio 

 as two to one compared with barley, and in our rotation it should 

 succeed it. Here it would be a hard matter to plow our ground 

 too deep or get our wheat in too early in the spring. Every 

 one knows how much seed to sow — the world to the contrary, 

 notwithstanding — and I should scarcely indicate my thought on 

 the subject were it otherwise. The better the quality of the 

 seed and also of the ground, inversely will be the ratio of de- 

 crease from two bushels. 



Some of our best farmers thresh their seed wheat with the flail 

 in order not to injure the germ in the berry. The plan is a 

 good one ; for the stack which is reserved for threshing with 

 the flail will be sure to be the best and ripest wheat the farmer 

 has raised, and this is exactly the article wanted for sowing. 

 The better and more fully developed the seed, the more power 

 it has to send up a strong and vigorous sprout. Who would 

 think of shelling his whole crop of corn into one bin, and then 

 reserving his seed from this. Surely, no one. Then why not 

 use the same praiseworthy precaution with other seeds that we 

 do with corn ? 



It is now deemed proper to suspend the cultivation of cereals, 

 so as to allow the soil time to recruit its strength — and in so do- 

 3h 



