446 AUGUST. 



with barley than with oats. While barley lays 

 on the swath, if much rain comes, it is apt to 

 sprout. In the wet harvest of 1801, this crop in 

 Norfolk presented a most melancholy spectacle ; 

 three or four wet and very warm days made it grow 

 to such a degree, that when the swaths came to be 

 turned, they looked as if feathers had been strewed 

 along every swath. Many thousand acres were thus 

 damaged : those farmers escaped best who lifted 

 the swaths before they were dry enough to turn ; 

 they raised them lightly from the ground with 

 forks to let air in ; a practice worth recommending. 

 After the fields are cleared, they are raked with art 

 instrument generally called a dew-rake, from its 

 being used in the dew of the morning : a man 

 draws it by a broad leather strap. This is a bad 

 Contrivance ; the work goes on slowly, and, being 

 hard, the men often neglect doing it well, and 

 much corn is left in the field. Instead of it, there 

 is in some counties a machine, called a horse-rake : 

 a rake ten or, twelve feet long, drawn by one horse. 

 This machine expedites the work greatly, at the 

 same time that it does it much better. The use of 

 h should be universal ; for one will work against 

 twenty men, as I have experienced ; and the price 

 is not above five guineas and a half complete. 



Barley and oats in -some countries are reaped: an 

 excellent custom where they cut low enough ; for 

 it is not with these as with wheat, which yields a 

 crop of stubble ; if reaped with spring-corn, what 

 is left in the field is lost to the farm-yard. But by 



reaping, 



