HARVESTING EARS, [Chap. 



cobb ; and c, a little group of grains ; b repre- 

 sents an ear before the grain be taken off. The 

 grains when they are taken off the cobb, are, as 

 I have just said, called shelled corn ; and the 

 operation of taking them off is not called thrash- 

 ing, but shelling, and it is performed by farmers 

 in general, in the following manner. They take 

 a piece of iron, that has a sharpish edge to it, 

 and fix it across a pretty broad tub ; they then 

 take an ear in their two hands, and, scraping it 

 long-ways across this piece of iron, the grains 

 fall into the tub, and they throw the cobb aside. 

 A stout man, a man with strong wrists, will shell 

 from twenty to thirty bushels a day in this man- 

 ner ; and the American farmers, generally, do it 

 in cold weather, in the winter, and most commonly 

 choose the fire-side as the scene of operation. 

 However, you do see them, when hard pushed, 

 actually threshing it with a flail. In tliis case^ 

 they fling down a large heap on a barn -floor, 

 hang up some cloths to prevent the grain from 

 flying over the sides of the floors and with a flail, 

 having a swinyel (as our people call it) about 

 two feet long, and as big round as a smallish 

 man's wrist, fastened to the end of a hand-staff, 

 as we call it, six feet long, and made also of some 

 tough wood, a Yankee fellow will, I dare say, 

 knock out a hundred bushels a day of shelled 

 corn. This, however_, is regarded as a slovenly 



