Harvesting Mistakes. 
177 
bear on the state of things always experienced in such a protracted, 
precarious season as that recently passed through. Some crops are 
more liable to sufier than others by remaining uncut, and one of the 
gravest of the mistakes into which too many fell was not to give 
priority to oat-cutting in those days when some amount of reaping 
could be accomplished. The grain adheres to oat-heads by such frail 
stalks that, whenever crops are allowed to get thoroughly ripe, the 
first stiff wind that blows occasions prodigious shedding of the grain. 
This is the reason that the most experienced farmers always make 
it a rule to cut their oat crops, if possible, while they are still seem- 
ingly green in foliage, and only just changing colour towards ripe- 
ness. If there happens to be some slight shrinkage in yield of 
grain as the result, it is sure to be abundantly made up in the 
better quality of the straw for foddering purposes, if not in the 
avoidance of the evil of corn-shedding just adverted to. 
Unfortunately, during the past season, there was an enormous 
loss in some districts on account of oats having been allowed to 
stand until they were over-ripe, and being exposed to the direful 
influences of some of the severest blasts ever known at harvest time. 
About the beginning of September, Mr. Teasdale H. Hutchinson, 
winner of the First Prize in Class I., Royal Agricultural Society’s 
Farm Competition in Yorkshire, wrote to the papers that in some 
places the wind had threshed half the corn. He must, of course, have 
alluded to oats ; for, although the stiff winds did take off the heads 
of barley rather extensively where the crops were over-ripe, it did 
not thresh them very much, and the heads were subsequently 
gathered up for utilisation in the rakings, if not in the main crop. 
V ery much is it to be hoped, however, that even this evil was suffered 
considerably less than was apprehended at tlie time, it having, after 
the ingathering, been stated by competent authorities that the 
crops of Scotland and the northern counties of England, where 
oats and barley are grown more extensively than wheat, had 
suffered far less through bad weatlier than the crops of the south of 
England. 
Another primary mistake into which some farmers of the 
southern and western counties fell was that of not tying their barley 
into sheaves, and placing the latter in stooks. They followed the 
old traditional custom of allowing their barley to remain in swathes 
to receive the benefit of three nights’ dews, and then turning the 
swathes for the reception of three more. Such a method of man- 
aging barley may operate very well by causing an improvement 
in colour in fine weather, but has quite the contrary effect when 
rain falls incessantly almost every day, and the barley has to lie 
a long time on the ground. Some of the largest com growers in 
those parts of the kingdom where this not very commendable 
custom prevails now employ self-binding reaping machines, and 
their barley, as well as their wheat and oats, was tied into sheaves in 
consequence. 
On a farm in Gloucestershire where this was done, although 
the sheaves remained in the field after being cut a considerable 
VOL. III. T. S. — 9 N 
