STACKING THE HAY. 147 



of its taking fire, or consuming without flame 

 inwardly, is very great. 



I never remember such a burst of rustic 

 mirth as occurred one day I think it was in 

 the first summer I spent on a farm when I 

 said the hay was so dry, I was afraid it would 

 take fire! I had heard of hay-stacks burning 

 of themselves, and could not conceive that it 

 could be when they were at all wet. My igno- 

 rance was made more amusing to them, and 

 painful to me, by a good deal of conceited 

 positiveness on my part, which w r ould not for a 

 long time give way to the repeated assurances 

 of others, who had had fifty years' experience. 

 Those husbandmen could not, of course, ex- 

 plain to me, that a chemical action, called fer- 

 mentation, takes place, when herbage is laid 

 together in a mass, and that this effect is gene- 

 rally more or less, in proportion to the degree 



