148 CULTURE OF FARM CROPS. 



will be put up in a condition best calculated to preserve 

 their valuable qualities. When the weather at and during 

 the period of harvesting is, and for some time before has been 

 fine, rains absent, and abundance of drying sunshine and 

 favourable breezes, the securing of the corn crop is a matter 

 of comparative ease ; but when the reverse of all this is 

 the case not by any means unlikely in this our variable 

 climate, with its "weeping skies and blustering winds "- 

 it is a matter of the highest importance that we should 

 know the best plans of harvesting, and how to carry them 

 out. The securing of corn crops naturally divides itself 

 into two departments ; first, the cutting and stocking or 

 sheaving in the fields ; and second, the stacking and ar- 

 rangement of the stack or rick yard. It is not within the 

 scope of the present volume to treat of the modes of cutting 

 corn crops now adopted in practice, namely, reaping by 

 the sickle, mowing by the scythe, and cutting by the reaping 

 machine what we have here to concern ourselves with is 

 the tying up or putting in sheaves of the corn cut by any 

 one of the above methods. The first process after the cut- 

 ting is the " gathering ; " and the second, the " putting up 

 the gathered corn in sheaves." On these the following re- 

 marks by a writer in the " Mark Lane Express " will be 

 useful here : " A successful gatherer takes up the cuts in 

 the swathe as the mower leaves them, cut after cut, if the 

 swathe has been properly laid, until she has a sheaf. This 

 is a very nice manipulation, and upon its proper perform- 

 ance the character of the sheaf in a great measure depends 

 as to how it can be bound and stocked. It, therefore, re- 

 quires a somewhat more detailed notice. 



" In gathering a sheaf, three things have to be attended 

 to, besides keeping close up to the mower. It has, in the 

 first place, to be made of the proper size small, in a wet 

 year like this ; next, the straw has to be kept straight ; 

 and then, it must be properly laid in the band for tying. 



" We must, therefore, attend to the links of our chain ; 

 and the first link is this : One cut, or so many separate 

 cuts (a cut being the quantity of corn cut and brought 



