JUNE.] STATE OP WHEAT CROPS. 381 



the weather may be, this operation, which is of 

 such essential importance in many improvements, 

 need not stop. 



STATE OF WHEAT CROPS. 



The young farmer will now be naturally led to 

 watch the progress of his wheat crops : no accu- 

 rate judgment can be formed till this month, which 

 will enable him to make various observations which 

 a man of any curiosity will not omit. It is re- 

 marked by a late writer, that wheat which has 

 carried a green and flourishing countenance 

 throughout the winter, often loses its verdure in 

 the spring, and assumes a yellow sickly aspecl. In 

 the spring of the year 1780, the forward sown 

 wheat was so much affecled by the cold weather in 

 the months of April and May (it having been one 

 of the most backward springs I ever remember), as 

 to become exceedingly yellow, and was interspersed 

 throughout with innumerable patches of different 

 tints, which patches, wherever they appear, are al- 

 ways accounted a certain and infallible prognostic of 

 a bad crop of wheat ; it having been remarked 

 that the fields where these patches abound, do sel- 

 dom if ever recover : though it is otherwise in 

 fields which have not these patches in them, since 

 with kindly weather in June, the corn on these lat- 

 ter fields often surmounts the mischief occa- 

 sioned to the blade by the vernal cold, according 

 to the old proverb current among the fanners, and 

 expressed in their homely lines, " I came to my 



wheat 



