WHEAT IN WESTERN CANADA 85 



pressure is required to drive it home, but only a small part 

 of the stabber is left unburied above the grain. At this 

 stage in the proceeding, therefore, the sampler often ceases 

 to use his hands and prepares for a new effort by putting 

 his foot upon the top of the stabber and setting his back 

 against the roof of the car. He then exerts the muscles of 

 his body and one leg and at the same time brings to his 

 aid the whole weight of his body. If a car is very full, 

 the working space between the grain and the roof of the 

 car may be so small that the sampler may find it necessary 

 first to drive the stabber for some distance into the grain 

 more or less obliquely and then to force it into a vertical 

 position. When the pointed end of the stabber has reached 

 the bottom of the car, the upper end by this time being 

 often almost buried, the sampler turns the handle of the 

 instrument, thereby allowing the grain from eleven differ- 

 ent levels to rush into the eleven chambers in the interior 

 of the inner tube. The chambers having been filled, he 

 again turns the handle and thus closes the apertures. He 

 then pulls out the stabber from the grain in which it has 

 been immersed, holds it lengthwise just above a long piece 

 of cloth by the grain door, and turns its handle so as 

 to open its apertures once more. Immediately the grain 

 falls out of the eleven chambers on to the cloth where it 

 forms a row of eleven corresponding heaps. At least 

 seven stabs are made in each car of wheat and the number 

 is usually nine. The cloth by the grain door thus comes 

 to have deposited on it at least seventy-seven small heaps of 

 grain and usually ninety-nine such heaps. Formerly the 

 stabbers were not plugged and there was but one chamber 

 in each. The wheat was then poured out of a stabber 

 through its open handle, the bottom wheat coming out 

 last. The plugged stabber is an improvement on the un- 

 plugged but takes more time to empty. 



