138 NOTES ON FIELDS AND CATTLE. 



straw to keep it well off the ground, and preclude 

 the ascent of damp. If the weather has been hot 

 throughout, the hay that was in bastard-cocks last 

 night will be fit to carry. Have out the horse-rake 

 then, and drive it together in huge rolls. Let the 

 carts and waggon then come forth. Two strong men 

 pitching can keep a waggon and two carts going, if 

 they have to travel, as is likely, a few hundred yards 

 to the rick -yard. While the carts are coming, the 

 pitchers, with their pikes against their middle, just 

 as a breast-plough is pushed, run the stout rows left 

 by the horse-rake into large cocks, into one of which, 

 when the conveyances arrive, sticking their pikes 

 together, with a simultaneous lift (one passing his 

 pike handily under the other's as they deliver it), 

 they land it bodily into the waggon, under charge of 

 the driver, who has mounted to dispose the load duly 

 about. 



If the weather have been only cool and cloudy and 

 the crop thick, especially if there be at the bottom 

 any quantity of the plantain-leaf, it will probably 

 not be fit to carry. The spare hands are then to 

 rake iuto double wind-rows, for bastard-cocking, the 

 bands of outspread summer-cocks ; then to build 

 into yet larger cocks, throwing together some three 

 or four, the bastard-cocks of last night, taking care 

 to rake up clean the sward between, depositing the 

 rakings on the summit of the cock. Then get the 

 double wind-rows into bastard-cocks, the fresh tedded 

 into wind-rows and summer-cocks, as on preceding 

 days. 



Uh Day.— Carry the large cocks : with the rest, 



