156 " Through the Wheat" 



used generically for any cereal, and not unfrequently, 

 indeed, for wheat and barley, as for instance in Lord 

 Tennyson's fine line in " Aylmer's Field "- 



" Fairer than Ruth among the fields of corn," 



whereas only wheat-harvest and barley-harvest are 

 spoken of in the Book of Ruth. But we must turn 

 from poetry to fact, and try to find in fact a sort of 

 hidden poetry. 



Take a single stalk of wheat in your hand, and 

 bring your finger down to feel how shiny and smooth it 

 is, and then try to break it sharp off; you will be sur- 

 prised at the resistance it will crack and split and 

 still hold together unless you are very violent indeed. 

 Nature has built it in the most scientific way for 

 strength, and for the resistance that comes from 

 buoyant yielding. It is a hollow tube, built exactly on 

 the plan of the strongest bones in the human body, 

 and of the great hollow piers for wide river bridges, as 

 seen on several in the Thames. It is perfectly round, 

 and so smooth and shining that any force would be 

 likely to slip from the centre to the sides and past 

 them at whatever point directed. Farmers tell me that 

 strong-strawed wheat, such as the "Suffolk Stand-up," 

 will resist almost any force of direct wind ; it is only 

 when the wind circles and changes and " beats round," 

 as they say, accompanied generally by rain, that it 

 goes down. Could God have built better a small stem 

 for resistance first, and also for the power of uprising 

 again afterwards ? Beaten down as it may be, the grain 

 continues to grow, so that despite the evil prognostica- 

 tions from laid grain general throughout the country 

 in 1 890, the farmers were pleasantly disappointed in a 

 crop which, alike for weight and quality, was far above 



