THE WHEAT-FIELD. 
197 
ten minutes. Dark vapors cover the heavens, and sweep over 
the hill-tops, but the clouds open, gleams of sunshine come and 
go, and no rain falls. Long drive in the morning. The mowers 
are still at work here and there, for there is much hay cut in our 
neighborhood. The wheat harvest has also commenced, and the 
crop is pronounced a very good one. 
There are certain fancies connected with the wheat-fields pre- 
vailing among our farmers, which they are very loth to give up. 
There is the old notion, for instance, that a single barberry-bush 
will blight acres of wheat, when growing near the grain, an opin- 
ion which is now, I believe, quite abandoned by persons of the 
best judgment. And yet you see frequent allusions to it, and 
occasionally some one brings up an instance which he sagely 
considers as unanswerable proof that the poor barberry is guilty 
of this crime. In this county we have no barberries ; they are a 
naturalized shrub in America ; at least, the variety now so com- 
mon in many parts of the country came originally from the other 
hemisphere, and they have not yet reached us. There is another 
kind, a native, abundant in Virginia; whether this is also ac- 
cused of blighting the wheat, 1 do not know. 
The deceitful chess, or cheat, is another object of especial aver- 
sion to the farmers, and very justly. It is not only a troublesome 
weed among a valuable crop, but, looking so much like the grain, 
its deceptive appearance is an especial aggravation. Many of our 
country folk, moreover, maintain that this plant is nothing but a 
sort of wicked, degenerate wheat ; they hold that a change comes 
over the grain by which it loses all its virtue, and takes another 
form, becoming, in short, the worthless chess ; this opinion some 
of them maintain stoutly against all opponents, at the point of 
