i 7 * 



all the grains oats, barley, wheat, and rye we may 

 usually trace stages when one particular crop is master 

 of the ceremonies. 



The oat is, of course, the least autumnal. Even when 

 cut, if the cutting is rightly timed, its straw is still juicy 

 with sap. The oat stocks are left to stand longer in the 

 field than other sheafs because the berries, to use the 

 Midland farmer s word, continue to suck sustenance 

 from the stem for as long as a fortnight after it is severed. 

 This is not only because the grain, being less fast of its 

 husk than wheat or barley, is cut before it is ripe. The 

 straw is in its nature what shall one say ? more hay- 

 like and less strawlike than other straws. It is not a mere 

 hollow pillar of concrete or silica, but a semi-succulent 

 grass, as doubtless every humble eater of chaff knows 

 well. Rye has the longest and toughest straw (&quot;the only 

 straw useful for the manufacture of mats), wheat the 

 most brittle, barley the most humble, and oats the most 

 edible. 



It is a liberal education in the lore of the country and 

 the glory of the country to take an accustomed walk past 

 a succession of harvest-fields throughout July. You 

 mark much more than mere growth or static differences. 

 The colour progresses from day to day as it shifts from 

 moment to moment under the shifting light. Shot silk 

 is not a more elusive chameleon ; and, talking of silk, 

 the prime beauty of barley is its silken shimmer. The 

 tissue waves into folds under the slightest breeze. The 

 long nap tosses the light about in a tangle of simultaneous 

 reflections and absorptions that out-tops comparison 

 even with &quot; the numberless laughter of the rippled sea/* 

 Yet barley, perhaps, comes not higher than third in the 

 list of the qualities that mean harvest to most of us, at 

 least if we do not live in Norfolk. 



