PREPARING SEED-GRAIN 261 



the land which I had broken, and as at the time I 

 knew of no grain-fanner which would separate wild 

 oats from wheat, I determined to clean my seed by 

 hand. I took a two-bushel sack into the kitchen 

 and rilled it in four half -bushel journeys from the 

 granary, and by daylight and lamplight I stuck to 

 my task. Of course it was quite absurd to have 

 contemplated or even to have hoped to clean over 

 sixty sacks of seed-grain in this way, and I don't 

 know that I was ever under the impression I could 

 finish ; but I didn't leave off, and when three 

 filled bags were facts accomplished, standing side 

 by side against the kitchen wall, the pride I felt in 

 showing the contents to anyone who came along as 

 a sample of my 1907 seed-grain, absolutely free 

 from smut, wild oats, or any sort of weed-seed, 

 baffled qualification. 



My method was to throw a basinful of grain on 

 the kitchen table, which was covered with white 

 linoleum, and separate the good from the evil with 

 the blade of a knife. If the good was beautiful, the 

 evil was profoundly interesting. None could imagine 

 that half a dozen cupfuls of smut and weed-seed in 

 a sack of seed-grain could be so dangerous to the 

 growth and financial value of a crop, or that it could 

 be so varied, strange, and vividly vile in appearance 

 and powerful in its evil purpose. Of all grain and 

 flowers of the field, I think wild oats seem most 

 strikingly full of life in the seed it is like a vegetable 

 grasshopper ; whilst a ball of smut gives one the 

 same kind of expression of its place in the vegetable 

 world as does the Watts portrait of Mammon in 

 the human race. The accomplishment of cleaning 

 all the grain was practically hopeless, but it had 



