SAVING WHEAT. &7 



they are carried, or, as we say, bawled (haled), th 

 cocks are apt to get a little warm, and only par- 

 tially heat in the mow, the hay cutting out streaky, 

 and not perhaps so bright or fragrant as when 

 uniformly heated in body: but I am acquainted 

 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 sea- 

 son. 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 de- 

 gree in the centre, and the butt 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 efficacious 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 thepook; 

 but when the season does not allow of this exposure, 



