26 SAVING WHEAT. 



as we say, bawled (haled,) the cocks are apt to get a 

 little warm, and only partially heat in the mow, the hay 

 cutting out streaky, and not perhaps so bright or fra- 

 grant as when uniformly heated in body : but I am ac- 

 quainted with no other disadvantage from this practice, 

 and it is assuredly the least expensive, and most ready 

 way of saving a crop in a moist and uncertain season. 

 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 but-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 effi- 

 cacious or speedy plan for securing a crop of wheat, 

 and thousands of loads are thus commonly 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 exposure, 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 effi- 

 cacious than this. 



Two of our crops not being of universal culture are 

 entitled to a brief mention. We grow the potato exten- 

 sively 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 population as their food, and affords them 

 a healthful employment for three months in the year, 

 during the various stages of planting, hacking, hoeing, 

 harvesting. Every laborer rents of the farmer some 

 portion of his land, to the amount of a rood or more, 



