M I N U T E S 



SEPT. 



'25- 



SEASONS. 



TIME OF 

 SOWING. 



\vhen the weather took up ; and the laft ten 

 days or a fortnight have been extremely fine 

 and fummer-like : foggy mornings and hot 

 parching days: a finer wheat-harveft never 

 happened. 



But the barlies are ftill backward, fome of 

 them quite green, fcarcely a fwath cut in the 

 neighbourhood. Neverthelefs, the crops look 

 well ; efpecially the late-fown ones ! a ftriking 

 proof, this, that the farmer, in his time of fow- 

 ing, ought to confuk thefeafon rather than the 

 /*. 



* Ofiolcr 10. A piece of barley which fell more par- 

 ticularly under my notice (fee M. 1 14.) was fovvn the fourth 

 and fifth of June ; and was cut the twenty fixth and 

 twenty-fevcnth of September : the crop not quite thick 

 enough upon the ground ; but remarkable ** top-corn !* 

 twenty-eight to thirty or thirty two grains on a fpike. 

 And what makes this incident a ftill ftronger evidence in. 

 favour of attending to the feafons for the proper time of 

 fou ing this piece of barley, though fown later by feye- 

 ral days than any other piece upon the farm, was (whers 

 it had not been chilled by the ftanding water) the Jloutrjl, 

 belt barley upon it. Had this piece of barley been fown 

 on the fame- days, in an early fpring, it is more than pro- 

 bable that, iaftcad of being the belt, it would have been 

 the worft, upon the farm. The ftoutnefs of the draw, the 

 length of the ears, and the plumpnefs of the grain (a 

 fyecimen of which I have preferred), are j rools that it 

 was fown in feafon, the fourth and fifth of June. 



For general remarks on this fubjer, fee Experiments and 

 dfervations on Agriculture and the Weather ^ p. 171. 



126. 



