226 
Harvesting Com. 
shine equally on botli sides. We do not believe that the system 
of setting stacks in the fields where they grow is the most econo- 
mical ; they should be placed on the most convenient spot as near 
the homestead as three carts, when carrying the crop, can deliver 
them ; on the threshing day the cavings, chaff, and grain will 
then be within a moderate distance for carting to the straw-barn 
and granary, arid the straw must be stacked till wanted, when it 
may be carted home by teams when returning from fieldwork. 
The working of the portable engine and threshing machine has 
shown how inexpedient it is to waste a fine day fit for threshing 
out of doors in carting crops into the barn, to be there threshed ; 
in fact, barns to hold crops in the straw are no longer required, 
and they should be converted into places for preparing food for 
cattle, or stalls for feeding, with a good plaster-floored granary 
above. When new buildings are erected, all that is required as 
stowage for corn is a granary, which should be erected over a 
good cart and implement shed. Instead of barns, what is now 
most required are places for cutting chaff, pulping roots, grinding 
corn, and breaking oilcake ; in fact, a food-factory, where the 
straw, roots, &c., can be manipulated into food containing all the 
elements found in the richest feeding pasture, which developes 
both fat and flesh with economy and despatch : thus we may 
produce a harvest of beef and mutton equal to the requirement 
of our fast-increasing population. 
Northampton. 
XII. — On the Economy of Carting. By Peter Love, 
Northampton. 
In the preceding Essay on Harvesting Corn, mention was 
incidentally made of the great saving in the labour of carting 
that might be effected by the introduction of field-barns and 
yards. This subject appears to deserve a separate notice, which 
will necessarily bring also under our consideration the great 
practical drawback Avhich arises from the irregular shape of 
many of our farms. 
In order to calculate this waste of labour, a particular case 
must be taken, under a certain rotation. Let us take that of an 
arable farm of good strong loam, wprth from 40s. to 50s. per 
acre, cultivated on a six-course rotation, and suppose its area to 
be a square mile, or 640 acres, which will give 105 acres for 
each shift, with 10 over for roads, yards, and waste. 
If there be on such a farm one central homestead, the mean 
distance for carting will be half-a-mile ; if four field-barns were 
