HAT AND CUT GREEN VODDER. 143 



dew at night may not undo the work of the day. The second day 

 after the grass has been cut, it should be tossed up in the air with 

 forks, after it has been spread out with a rake and the dew has 

 evaporated. If the hay is now ready, it should be carted away or 

 stacked ; otherwise it must be collected once more into heaps 

 against the night, and tossed up again with forks for another day. 

 Wet weather is of course disastrous for hay-making. Good hay 

 is greenish in colour, appreciably dry, sweetish to the taste, and 

 agreeably scented. The weight of hay is ^rd that of the original 

 grass. 



To preserve hay it should be stacked, in order to protect it from 

 wind, rain and dew, and, at low elevations, also from white ants. 

 The ordinary Indian way followed in the plains is to tie up the 

 hay in bundles from 1 to 3 lbs. each, which are piled up in stacks 

 resembling either a house with a pent roof or a circular hut with 

 a conical roof. The dimensions at the eaves in either case is 

 greater than those at the base, in order to let the rain drop off on 

 the ground clear of the hay. The former kind of stack is the 

 easier one to bnild, especially when large stacks are required. Such 

 stacks, containing 200,000 lbs. of hay, are not uncommon. After 

 the stacking is completed, a roof of thatch should be put on. For 

 the first kind of stack the thatch can be constructed on the ground 

 and then put up and kept down with ropes heavily weighted at 

 the ends, thereby also securing compression for the hay — another 

 very important advantage gained by the adoption of that mode of 

 stacking. For the supply of the army in cantonments Captain 

 Wingate, the officer specially charged with the forage operations 

 of the Western Commissariat Circle of the Bengal Presidency, 

 recommends the following system of stacking. A circle is traced 

 on the ground of the required diameter and encircled with a 

 shallow trench, the earth from which is used to raise the ground 

 inside. Above this earth is laid a 4 to 6-inch bed of cinders, 

 which not only keeps out white ants and rats, but also prevents 

 damp getting in from below. Before the grass is stacked, the site 

 is dressed, so as to give it the form of a flat dome. The height of 

 the stack at the eaves is about two-thirds of the diameter at the 

 base, and the diameter there at least 6 feet in excess of the lower 

 one. The stack is then finished off in the form of a cone with 

 steep sides. It should not be thatched until it has settled. This 

 takes about a fortnight, and in the meantime the hay is protected 

 with tarpaulins. In the Himalayas, where space is always a de- 

 sideratum, the stacks are usually built up loosely, in a more or less 

 globular form, on pollards or in the crowns of trees in the midst 



