Wheat 



11 



reaping-machine cuts off the haulms and throws them down at regular intervals, and the 

 binders gather two or three of these heaps together to bind them into sheaves. But still 

 more perfect machines exist, which both cut the haulms and bind them into sheaves. These 

 are the self-binding machines, and only. one man is wanted to drive each machine. On the 

 immense corn-fields of the Far West, the Americans have for. some time been successfully 

 using gigantic, very ingeniously constructed machines, called " harvesters," which, drawn by 

 twenty-four to forty horses, travel through the miles of corn, cutting out a track up to twenty 

 feet wide, reaping, cleaning, and threshing the wheat, putting it into bags, a long line of which 

 it leaves behind. Portable factories we might well call these huge machines, besides which 

 the self-binding machines look like toys. Still larger harvesters are drawn by huge traction 

 engines, and, as giving an idea of their capacity, some of those in use in California cut over 

 forty feet at once, and harvest and leave in sacks ready for export the crop from as much as 

 120 acres in one day. Eight men are required to work such a machine. 



After the harvesting the corn may be taken to the rick or to the barn, but the sheaves 

 must be thoroughly dry, for if heaped up while wet, heat is developed, which causes both corn 

 and straw to ferment, and hence to be spoiled. 



After the stacks have been constructed, or the sheaves have been taken to the barn, a 

 privilege which is as old as the world allows the poor people to come and glean the ears which 

 are left on the field. The picturesque silhouettes of the gleaners, stooping over the stubble 

 and picking up the forgotten ears, have often tempted painters and poets. 



Threshing, or separating the grain from the ear, is the next process, but as a rule this is 

 not urgent, unless the farmer can obtain a higher price for his corn immediately after the 

 harvest. <That part of the crop which is to be kept for seed is reaped last, because it has to be 

 thoroughly ripe, and it is, as a rule, threshed first. 



The small farmer threshes with the flail. The cut corn is spread out on the barn floor 

 in a layer about an inch thick, the ears all pointing in one direction, and on these the flails 

 come down at regular intervals. When the grains have been threshed out from the upper 

 surface, the wheat is turned over and the threshing renewed. This work takes a long time 

 and is very exhausting ; moreover it is not perfect, for, notwithstanding the thresher's 

 energy, all the kernels are not separated from the ears. But when the corn is threshed in 

 this way the straw is less damaged than when a threshing-machine is used, and on this 

 account such straw is preferred for several purposes. 



On farms of medium size another mode of threshing is practised. A thick layer of haulms 

 is spread on the barn-floor ; 

 in the middle stands a pole 

 with a leathern strap at- 

 " tached, fastened at the other 

 end to a couple of horses or 

 oxen, which draw a loaded 

 cart with notched wheels. 

 The animals walk round as 

 in a circus, and in this way 

 the strap is wound round 

 the pole, becoming shorter 

 and shorter, so that the cart 

 describes a spiral course on 

 the barn floor, until at last 

 it has been over the whole of 

 the corn. This method is 

 more successful than that 

 with the flail ; it is practised winnowing corn in india 



