IV.] PLANTING. 



the 15th and 20th of April. This will bring it 

 all up by the 7th or 8th of May ; which is about 

 the time for closing the barley-sowing ; and it is 

 desirable on another account^ to be mentioned by- 

 and-bye^ that the planting should take place at 

 this time of the year. 



49. Though I state this to be the time that I 

 would choose^ we have not at all times the power of 

 choosing ; and, we are not, because we cannot have 

 precisely what we like, to reject altogether that 

 which we may have. I have now (29th October), 

 in my garden at Kensington, some corn, planted 

 in the first week in June. It is perfectly ripe and 

 hard, though I mean to let some of it stand till 

 Christmas, in order to ascertain to what length a 

 lazy farmer may go without incurring the destruc- 

 tion of his crop. I am pretty safe from birds at 

 Kensington ; from the sparrows I mean, which 

 come and settle upon the plants, and hammer out 

 the grains from the tops of some of the ears as soon 

 as they are ripe ; otherwise the corn would be ma- 

 terially injured by Christmas. I have given an in- 

 stance in paragraph 29, of a prodigious crop upon 

 three quarters of a rod of ground, which was 

 planted on the ninth of June, having been soaked 

 twenty-four hours before it was planted. My 

 large field of this year was planted between the 

 7th of May and the 1st of June 3 a part of it in 



