26 SAVING WHEAT. 



For wheat it is a very efficacious plan, as these 

 stacks or pooks, (a corruption perhaps of packs,) 

 when properly made, resist long and heavy rains ; 

 the sheaves not being simply piled together, but the 

 heads gradually elevated to a certain degree in the 

 centre, and the butt end then shoots off the water, 

 the summit being lightly thatched. An objection 

 has been raised to this custom, from the idea that 

 the mice in the field take refuge in the pooks, and 

 are thus carried home ; but mice will resort to the 

 sheaves as well when drying, and be conveyed in 

 like manner to the barn : we have certainly no 

 equally efficacious or speedy plan for securing a 

 crop of wheat, and thousands of loads are thus com- 

 monly saved, which would otherwise be endangered, 

 or lost by vegetating in the sheaf. 



We will admit that grain, hardened by exposure 

 to the sun and air in the sheaf, is sooner ready for 

 the miller, and is generally a brighter article than 

 that which has been hastily heaped up in the pook ; 

 but when the season does not allow of this expo- 

 sure, but obliges us to prevent the germinating of 

 the grain by any means, I know no practice, as an 

 expedient, rather than a recommendation in all 

 cases, more prompt and efficacious than this. 



Two of our crops not being of universal cul- 

 ture are entitled to a brief mention. We grow 

 the potato extensively in our fields, a root which 

 must be considered, after bread-corn and rice, the 

 kindest vegetable gift of Providence to mankind. 

 This root forms the chief support of our popula- 



