COUNTRY LIFE
WHATEVER deficiencies may be alleged against this summer's grain harvest, now virtually completed, it has been the quickest and, I may say, one of the most amusing on record. New methods have been tried with no little spirit in different counties. Old, very old, Rolls-Royces and other first-rate motor-cars, as well as proper tractors, have been equipped with sweeps and such apparatus, and have careered across the fields with a heavy burden of shocks and little stacks. The number of the smaller and so more general harvester-threshers has been greatly increased, and there is little doubt that this method of harvesting will become common. In this year's hot drought it mattered little what method was employed ; but in an ordinary year the only method that can short-circuit bad weather is the combined harvester. Again, even straw stacks and hay ricks have been altered, for baling on the field of operations has become common and has many advantages. All reports from most districts rather lugubriously agree in estimating the harvest as light ; but I shall expect to hear that the amount of good grain that falls into the threshing sacks will considerably qualify the humble estimates. As for the gleaners, the extravagant habit (due to lack of expert labour and the pride in the new machinery) of omitting to mow the headlands has induced some of the pickers up of unconsidered trifles to go to work with a sickle (or bagging hook), and their sheaves have been rich.
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