| require any special notice. 
| most, of these barns have been built in some one 
BARN. 
‘arrangement of farmeries, have convinced the 
_most hesitating, that the rick-yard is both the 
cheaper and the better place for the great bulk 
of the produce, and that the barn is needed only 
for the operations of thrashing, and for the stor- 
ing of as much corn as will keep these operations 
in steady progress. A barn which contains a 
thrashing-floor, thrashing implements, and as 
much sheaf-corn as would make a rick, is now, 
found to be sufficiently capacious for a middle- 
sized English farm. But two requisite append- 
ages on every farm of considerable extent are 
houses or apartments for winnowing the corn 
and storing the thrashed straw; and these are 
usually called the corn-barn and the straw-barn. 
Small barns in which all thrashing is effected 
by hand, have all their floor on one level, the 
thrashing-floor near the middle, and two. large 
doors opposite each other, and on a line with the 
thrashing-floor ; and they require, even more 
urgently than other barns, to have their floor 
perfectly dry, and quite inaccessible to damp. 
But barns in which most of the thrashing is 
| effected by machinery are now so universal on 
farms of any considerable size, that they alone 
Very many, perhaps 
or other of four forms, each adapted to the situ- 
ation and arrangement of the other offices of the 
farmery. In one of the forms, the barn and its 
appendages stand on astraight line, and form one 
| side of a court, the corn-barn and the straw-barn 
at the sides, the barn itself in the middle, and 
the horse-course, the wind-tower, or the water- 
| wheel on the back of the barn or exterior to the 
court. In another form, the barn stands at one 
corner of the court, the two appendages form 
wings to it, but stand on different sides of the 
court, or at right angles to each other, and the. 
horse-course is situated behind the part which 
adjoins the straw-barn. In a third form, the 
barn abuts backward from the centre of the 
north side of the court, in shape like the letter 
T, having the straw-barn in a line with the 
court, and the corn-barn projecting from its mid- 
dle into the stack-yard, with the mill at the end 
next the straw-barn, and the horse-course in one 
of the angles. In the fourth form, the barn is 
the upper part of a two-story building, and the 
corn-barn and straw-barn occupy the ground floor. 
But whether built in any of these forms or in 
some other, a barn is capable of. being greatly 
modified in size to suit the extent of the farm, in 
internal construction to suit the particular me- 
thod of farm management, and in exterior adap- 
tation to suit both the peculiarities of the site 
and the general arrangement of the farmery. 
When foreign wood and slate roof are employed 
in the erection, the barn is usually much wider, 
than when home-grown timber and roofs of heath 
or thatch are used. Some barns, even in excel- 
lent farming districts, have a width of only 18 
feet within the walls; but no really good barn 
has a width of less than 20 feet. A barn of 35 
feet in length and 20 feet in width, exclusive of 
the space occupied by the machinery, can contain 
as much as two moderately sized ricks, or from 
50 to 60 bolls; yet a barn for a very large farm 
—in order, both to afford ample storage for un- 
thrashed corn in unfavourable weather, and to 
allow space for a straw-cutter, clover-thrasher, 
and other subordinate matters—ought to have 
an extent of 60 feet in length, and from 20 to 24 
feet in width. The straw-barn should be situated 
in immediate adjunction to the thrashing-ma- 
chine; it must contain storage for at least fod- 
der-straw and litter-straw ; and it ought, if pos- 
sible, to afford both space and easy outlet for 
straw of the different grains, or of four principal 
qualities. 
in size, and must have attached to it a chaff- 
house, and a communication by stair or gangway 
with the granaries. See the articles THRasHING, 
Winnowine, GRANARY, and Farm-Boinpines. 
A barn situated on the face of a rapid slope, and 
built two-story high, might have its own floor on 
a level with the rick-yard, and the floor of its 
corn-barn and its straw-barn on a level with the 
court ; an arrangement which would happily fa- 
cilitate both the ingress of the unthrashed corn 
from the ricks, and the egress of the thrashed 
straw to the cattle-houses. A barn whose floor 
is on a level with the whole of the surrounding 
ground, may be provided with wide and lofty 
gates through its sides, to permit a loaded cart 
to enter, unload, and pass on; but, in this case 
—if provided, as it ought to be, with a thrashing- 
floor for samples of grain and for the whole bulk 
of such small seeds as those of clover—it will 
sustain serious damage from both the tread of 
the horse and the abrasure of the wheels. A 
ground-floor barn, without gates, may be provided 
with an opening or .pitch-hole, through which 
301 
The corn-barn must be proportionate | 
the unthrashed corn can be forked from a loaded | 
cart on the outside; but this device occasions 
| the unloading to be extremely tedious, and is 
either useless or mischievous in showery weather. 
A barn on an upper story may communicate 
‘with the rick-yard by a gangway, and receive its 
supplies of unthrashed corn by hand-carriage or 
by the wheel-barrow ; or the building in which 
it is situated may be provided across one end with 
a covered space or sort of rude piazza, wide and 
lofty enough to admit a loaded cart, and having 
a side opening or pitch-hole to allow the corn to 
be forked into the barn. A common roofed two- 
story barn may be so extended by lateral erec- 
tions, as to overshadow and shelter with its roof 
a series of cattle-sheds; and its straw-barn on the 
ground-floor might be provided with slits or 
openings for affording to these sheds immediate 
supplies of fodder and litter. 
The walls of a barn are variously built of 
earthen composition, timber, brick, and stones. 
Harthen composition ought never to be used 
when better materials can be economically ob- 
ee 
