58 OUR FAEM CROPS. 



work, it is always desirable, as far as possible, to have to 

 deal with known quantities. By previously determining 

 the size of sheaves and stocks, the arrangement of the 

 after labour of harvest carting 1 and stacking is much 

 facilitated. An average day's work for a man to fork up, 

 to load in the field, and to pitch up at the stack, would 

 be about 1000 to 1200 sheaves of the diameter given at 

 the band ; and a good stacker, with a boy to take and 

 hand the sheaves, would get through the same number in 

 the day. The wages to be given for day or piecework 

 can thus be easily regulated. 



In stacking, great difference of opinion still exists. 

 Various methods and shapes are to be met with in different 

 parts of the country. They all, however, are or partake 

 of one or two forms either circular, with a conical roof, 

 or in the form of a parallelepiped, or rather prismoid, with 

 the roof in the shape of a triangular prism. The nearer 

 the height of the roof approaches the radius (or half dia- 

 meter) of a circular stack, or of half the breadth of an 

 oblong stack, the better, as such an angle of declination 

 for the roof enables the water to pass off most easily. The 

 height of the eaves from the ground should never exceed 

 16 to 18 feet, as beyond that height it is difficult to 

 fork up from the cart, and requires extra labour. 



1 The relative merits of waggons and one-horse carts here deserve a farmer's 

 consideration. One or the other must be used, and it is clearly his interest, as 

 a manufacturer, to use that which is most efficient and most economical in its 

 work. We find every here and there throughout the country carts are super- 

 seding waggons, but nowhere do we find waggons superseding carts. If some 

 of those excellent articles in the Roy. Agri. Soc. Jour, bearing upon this ques- 

 tion, were more read, this change would take place more rapidly. A paper by 

 Mr. Hannam " On the Reduction of Horse Labour by Single-horse Carts," in 

 vol. ii., p. 73, and a report by Mr. Pusey, in vol. iv., p. 305, of a comparative 

 trial in Lincolnshire of waggons and carts, contain many points worthy of con- 

 sideration. In the trial referred to, the work of the carbs was superior to that 

 of waggons in the proportion of nine to five ; and again, at some public trials 

 at Grantham in 1850, 5 horses in 5 carts were matched against 10 horses in 5 

 waggons, and the 5 carts beat the 5 waggons by 2 loads in the day's work. 

 Roy. Agri. Soc. Jour., vol. xii., p. 617. See also Roy. Agri. Soc. Jour., pp. 

 156, 375, and 398. 



