24 CLIMATE, SEASONS, &;c. Part I, 



July 24. Fine hot day. Harvest (for grain) near- 

 ly over. The main part of the wheat, &c.. 

 is put into Barns, which are very large 

 and commodious. Some they put into 

 small ricks, or stacks, out in the fields, 

 and there they stand, withoid any thatch- 

 ing, 'till they are wanted to be taken in 

 during the winter, and, sometimes they 

 remain out for a whole year. Nothing 

 can prove more clearly than this fact the 

 great difference between this climate and 

 that of England, where, as every body 

 knows, such stacks would be mere heaps 

 of muck by January, if they were not, 

 long and long before that time, carried 

 clean oif the farm by the wind. The crop 

 is sometimes threshed out in the field by 

 the feet of horses, as in the South of 

 France. It is sometimes carried into the 

 barns'-floor, where three or four horses, 

 or oxen, going a-breast tramples out the 

 grain as the sheaves, or swarths are 

 brought in. And this explains to us the 

 liumane precept of Moses, " not to muz- 

 zle the ox as he treadeth out the grain,'''* 

 which we country people in England can- 

 not make out. 1 used to bepuzzled, too, 

 in the story of Ruth, to imagine how 

 BoAZ could be busy amongst his threshers 

 m the height of harvest. — The weather 

 is so fine, and the grain so dry, that, when 

 the wheat and rye are threshed by the 

 flail, the sheaves are barely untied, laid 

 upon the floor, receive a few raps, and 

 are then tied up, clean threshed, for 

 straw, without the order of the straws be- 

 ing in the least changed ! The ears and 

 butts retain their places in the sheaf, and 

 the band that tied the sheaf before ties 



