and in tlie Stack in Haymaking, 31 



processes to liaymaking on a large scale, and I question much 

 Avhetlier, in ordinary' farm practice, it is worth while seriously to 

 entertain suggestions for drying grass by artificial heat, dry 

 currents of air, or the combined action of these two agents. 

 The special question whether sewage grass grown in the im- 

 mediate neighbourhood of large towns can be profitably made 

 into hay by artificial means, remains yet to be solved. In 

 ordinary farm practice haymaking, in a trying season like the 

 last, will probably always be subject to more or less of waste 

 in feeding substance ; it becomes us therefore to inquire how 

 far the loss can be mitigated, if not avoided. To this end it will 

 be useful to trace, somewhat in detail, the nature and extent of 

 the injury which grass sustains in haymaking, since hitherto 

 little has been done in this direction. Such losses are generally 

 traceable : — 



1. To prolonged showery weather after the grass has been cut, 

 so that it ultimately gets wet and half-dried, and has to be moved 

 frequently on the ground before it can be carted and stacked. 



2. To bad management in the field, and subsequent heating 

 in the stack. 



3. To the mistake of cutting the produce either too early or 

 too late in the season. 



Prognostications of the weather are, to say the least of them, 

 very deceptive, and though the sun may be shining when the 

 grass is cut, predictions as to the continuance of fine weather 

 cannot be relied upon. Over one great cause of loss the farmer 

 then has little or no control ; it is not so, however, with the two 

 remaining causes ; though it is to be feared that injuries thus 

 done to hay are too frequently put down altogether to bad 

 weather. 



1. — Unpropitious Weather during the Haymaking Season. 



Grass and clover, when ready to be cut down, contain a con- 

 siderable quantity of sugar, gum, luucilage, albuminous and 

 other soluble compounds, which are all liable to be washed away 

 by heavy showers of rain. As long as grass is still quite fresh, 

 rain falling upon it has little or no injurious effect, for fortunately 

 a coating of waxy or fatty matter covers the epidermis, and 

 wraps, so to speak, the whole vegetable matter in a waterproof 

 mantle. Rain for this reason may fall for days on newly-cut 

 grass without doing any injury to it ; but the case is very 

 different if, by repeated turnings, the crop has become more or 

 less bruised, and rain then descends upon the half-made hay : 

 not only are sugar, gum, and other soluble matters then liable to 

 be washed out, but the bruised state of the plants, admitting 

 at least a partial diffusion of the various constituents through the 



