382 AGRICULTURAL SURVEY 



fiarving. It would certainly be more comfortable 

 if they undertook the reaping and mowing of a 

 certain number of acres, in which cafe, the man 

 might work with his family, and his wife and chil- 

 dren would earn fomething confiderable, not only 

 in the reaping part, but in the cocking and raking 

 the lent grain, which would enable them to eat a 

 corrifortable morfel together. There would not, if 

 this were the cafe, be half fo much corn {helled 

 and loft j and the barley, in a wet feafon, would 

 be better preferved, and admit of being carried 

 much earlier in the morning from the cock, than 



O f 



}t can from the fwarth (b). 



Stacking is another thing which is very ill done 

 here, particularly wheat (lacks, though they are 

 lornewhat improved too in making them, of late 

 years; but they run them up in along rickety 

 form, without fymmetry, and feldom fet them up- 

 on i\ addles, to preferve the corn from vermin. 

 Another very bad practice relates to their fences, 

 No farmers raife a white-thorn hedge fooner, or 

 dellroy it fo foon ; every other time of cutting 

 hedges of this fort, thev are buck-flailed, as it is 

 ca'Ied, which is cutting the whole hedge off at 

 about three feet from the ground, which is an irre- 

 parable injury to it, by checking the growth, and 

 making it hollow at the bottom. And as to other 

 thorns and ftubb-wood, they are apt to cut them 

 as their immediate wants require, at all feafons of 



the 



