HARVESTING. 153 



" The same rule applies to beans and many other crops. 

 Round stooks, too, from the ears being less exposed, are 

 better protected from predatory birds, which often commit 

 too great havoc by devouring corn in time of scarcity, and 

 more especially this year, from the circumstance of their 

 rejecting the blighted corn (which, unhappily, so much 

 prevails) and feeding upon the best. On small plots near 

 neighbourhoods and homesteads, where sparrows frequent 

 most, one quarter of the entire crop of wheat may be fairly 

 stated as being destroyed by those depredators j in some 

 cases the whole." 



The following, on the subject of setting up sheaves 

 and on stacking of corn, is from an able paper read re- 

 cently before the "Winfrith Farmers' Club:" "In a 

 general way sheaves of all kinds should be small, and the 

 stitch or shock, consisting of from five to eight on each 

 side, should be made by commencing in what is to form 

 the middle, as by this course the sheaves lean towards the 

 centre and stand better afterwards; each sheaf should be 

 placed or rather struck on the ground in a slanting position 

 (not upright and made leaning afterwards), and should meet 

 directly the sheaf on the opposite side, so that each one 

 may help to support the other. A very secure method for 

 sheaved wheat, though not often practised or necessary, is 

 that of cap-stitching, performed by first placing a sheaf on 

 the ground perpendicularly, then placing others in a lean- 

 ing position against it to the number say of fifteen or 

 twenty, the object being to produce a round stitch, firm 

 and regularly pointed at the top to receive the cap-sheaf 

 or hood, which is made of two sheaves bound together, 

 or, what is better, a sheaf double the ordinary size bound 

 near the tail tightly. This sheaf is spread from the centre 

 and lifted over the stitch, the ears drawn downward, and 

 the reed straightened; another band round the whole 

 completes the stitch, which is thus secure against all 

 weather, and is a very good practice in small enclosures 

 and in wet seasons, when from heat and moisture corn 

 vegetates quickly, also as a means of securing those kinds 



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