374 



CHAPTER XIV. 



EVENTS come round in cycles. In 1750, the winter 

 was as mild as tliat which has just passed, and the 

 spring very early. In Sweden, the ' steel nights,' which 

 are generally felt in all their rigour somewhere about the 

 last week in February, were so entirely absent, that lands 

 were sown in Upland in that week ; the usual time for 

 sowing in Sweden seldom arriving before April. Harald 

 Barck, who records this unusual mildness and its conse- 

 quences, adds, that he is not ignorant that the lands in 

 some of the northern provinces, especially those which 

 abound in clay, require early sowing, that the ground 

 may be broken with less trouble, and that the first shoots 

 of the barley may make their way through it before it 

 grows stiff. He adds, that the people of Schonen, and 

 others that dwell near the sea, sow late, whether the 

 spring be early or not; and that sometimes to their great 

 loss, for no other reason, than that they received this 

 custom from their ancestors. The most northern inhabi- 

 tants of Sweden find it necessary to sow as soon as the 

 frost breaks up, that the short summer may perfectly 

 ripen the grain before the winter approaches. For as 

 eggs require a fixed time for the exclusion of the young, 

 so the barley does in different provinces to ripen the 

 seed.* Harald then gives a table of the times of sowing 

 in different localities, in different years, the latest time 

 being the 18th of June, and the earliest the 16th of 

 April. He concludes from these observations, that the 

 sowing of barley nearly coincides with the foliation of the 



* AmcBn. Acad, 



