192 State of Agriculture in Northumberland. 



east and west. The stack-jard is on the north side of the 

 square, and the barn containing the threshing-machine projects 

 into it at right angles with the line of hovels, which constitute the 

 northern side of the square, the straw being thrown from the 

 rakes into a large barn or straw-house in the centre of that range, 

 where it is piled up for use. It is of consequence that the barn 

 be in the centre of the range, because the straw to supply the 

 cattle is carried out right and left, and only to half the distance 

 which much of it would require to be carried if the barn stood in 

 any other situation ; the same reason holds with regard to corn 

 which is being threshed and intended to be laid up in granaries : 

 grain keeps much better in granaries that are over open hovels 

 than in those that are over close houses in which horses or cattle 

 of any kind are tied up : and by this arrangement the granaries are 

 made over the hovels, which extend from each side of the barn, 

 and the corn is carried to them from the dressing-floor below, 

 without being taken from under the same roof, or the sacks are 

 drawn up by a pulley and tackle worked from the wheel of the 

 threshing-machine, whether driven by water or steam, and con- 

 veyed on hand-barrows with wheels to all parts of the granaries ; 

 from which again they are loaded into carts through trap- doors in 

 the floor, below which the carts are placed within the hovels. 

 The saving of labour attending the laying up and removing of 

 corn from granaries so situated, as compared with others at a 

 distance from the threshing-barn, is very obvious. It is desirable 

 for the same reason that the straw-barn should stand the cross 

 way of the threshing-barn, and not in the same range with it, so 

 that the rake of the machine may deliver the straw into the middle 

 and not the end of it ; in this way the straw has only to be carried 

 half the length of the house instead of the whole ; and when two 

 kinds of straw are in use, one for fodder and another for litter, 

 they can be kept quite distinct, and are easily taken out by leav- 

 ing an open space between them. Peculiar situations may very 

 properly render deviations from these general rules at times right 

 and necessary, but where so important a consideration as the 

 economy of labour is involved, and that for a long course of years, 

 as in the erection of an extensive and permanent set of farm- 

 buiidings, too much attention cannot be paid to it in the arrange- 

 ment to be adopted. 



Dilsion, ISth February, 1841. 



