JOY IN HARVEST 



259 



is one of the common possessions of mankind. Above the 

 green rice that they transplant in Japan or the maize that 

 brings wealth to the Argentine comes the golden wheat, 

 the one plant about which the farmer is becoming some- 

 thing of a botanist. His care for this variety or that has 

 followed the custom of sowing by drill in 

 neat lines. In these days the newly grown 

 wheat looks as regular as lines on a sheet of 

 foolscap, and this neatness informs the whole 

 crop till it falls. So farmers begin to hate 

 the sight of a 'robber,' an odd variety that 

 grows taller or lower or differs in the ear. 

 The pure seed is demanded whether of the 

 stout English Squarehead's master, or the 

 wide-grained long French wheat, or the taper- 

 ing Wilhelmina from Holland. You may 

 detect a difference in the wheat harvest as 

 you approach the towns. So vast is the 

 quantity of sparrows which the town breeds 

 that many farmers sow a bearded or Rivet 

 wheat where the birds chiefly congregate. 

 You can mark it from a long distance by 

 the dusky almost blue look of the great 

 stout ears on which each grain puts forth a 

 sharp rough spear, making a chevaux de 

 frise from which even the lustiness of the 

 sparrow recoils. 



Of the true wheats it is the colour that makes the 

 splendour. They are real gold. They wear ' the burnished 

 livery of the sun,' while the other grains, more shapely 

 perhaps taken plant by plant, merely pale in the suns of July 

 and August. A head of oats is delightful in form, whether 

 they are the old Tartarean sorts which push out on one side 



WILHELMINA 

 WHEAT 



