With us, oats are usually sown by hand. Machine-sowing, however, has been practiced to some extent during the last ten years, and for various reasons is the preferable way. The work is more quickly accomplished, and the quantity scattered can be more accurately gauged during the progress of it. If the usual area is not large, say not over eight or ten acres, a little handsower, costing five or six dollars, is all the machine required, and a man of ordinary capacity can learn its use in ten minutes. If, however, the areas are extensive, and particularly if it be desirable to sow phosphates as well, a larger machine operated by horse-power becomes necessary.

XI.

ACCIDENTS TO THE OAT CROP.

There are three serious accidents to which the oat crop is peculiarly liable, viz., drought, rust, and lodging. Fortunately, however, it is rarely subjected to all three of these in a single season. If it be pinched with drought, it will not fall down, and rust seldom deems it an object to strike a light crop. But whether these come singly or by twos or threes, their presence is objectionable, and should be avoided if possible.

1. Drought. The best remedy I know of for drought is early sowing, a favorable soil, a deep seed bed of fine tilth, manured as highly as the crop will bear, and no higher. These conditions will secure all the moisture the rains, dews, and fogs afford. The crop will be well advanced early in the season so as to shield the ground and prevent rapid evaporation, while its early maturity will abridge the period of its exposure to the dry spells to which the summer may be subjected.

2. Rust. I do not know that we can do very much to prevent rust. The use of the very best and most healthy seed may aid somewhat in this direction. In fact, anything favoring a vigorous and rapid growth is a protection. In the vegetable as in the human family, the individuals of most abundant vitality and strength stand all exposures best. Early maturing oats are, as a general thing, most likely to escape this pest of the oat field, and such varieties should be carefully selected.

3. Lodging. The means just suggested will be found in some degree efficient for the prevention of the lodging of an oat crop. The pretty frequent change of seed with a view to raising the greatest weight of grain upon the least amount of straw may also aid somewhat in the effort to keep the straw upright until it is ready to cut. So, also, will particular care as to the sufficient and least sufficient fertilization of the field. Too heavy manuring, resulting in heavy straw, will be quite sure, by the aid of some shower attended by wind, to lay the crop as flat as the lily-pads of a muck-pond, thereby preventing the full development of the heads and seriously diminishing the promised yield.* If one would secure a maximum crop of oats he must give himself to a meeting of the requirements of that one crop, and not treat it as part of a rotation, or sacrifice its particular wants to those of others coming before or after it.

XII.

CUTTING AND CURING.

The methods of curing oats will vary with the character of the ground and crop. If the area be large, tolerably level, and smooth, an oat crop may be most economically cut by a horsepower reaper and binder. If the reverse is the case, we must depend upon the sickle, the cradle, or the scythe. The high price of labor has rendered obsolete the first of these. The difficulty of finding men knowing how to use it is displacing the second, and in many sections the mowing of this crop has already become the general practice. This requires no skilled labor, and the crop may be removed from the field in a short time after it is cut — an important consideration if the land is to be seeded to grass the same season. The straw, of course, will be left in a tangled condition, but this is an objection of little weight with persons who have their oats thrashed by a machine. In that event all straw is left in uniform condition after thrashing, whatever this may have been before it was cut.

The time of cutting will vary, of course, according to the pur

*It is the practice of some farmers to sow a small quantity of rye with their oats. The stiffer stalks of the former are supposed to give additional support to those of the latter, while a slight admixture of the smaller cereal rather increases than diminishes the value of the crop.

pose for which the crop has been raised. If designed for forage simply, it should be cut while in the milk, and dried like hay before it is housed. If grain be the main object sought, it should stand until the straw is nearly dry, particularly if it is to be housed soon after cutting. If it is to be bound in sheaves and stooked, it may be cut while the piece is partially green, as the grain and straw will both ripen in the shock. The scattering of loose seeds over the ground, incident to the mowing process, will also be largely avoided by early harvesting.

I have generally found that when land is sown to grass immediately after the removal of a mowed oat crop, a new growth springs up and covers the tender grass plants. This, if thick, had best be removed before the frost prostrates it, lest it smother them.

The binding and stooking of oats can be neatly and well done, or done very poorly. If the sheaves be large and the stooks built solid, the oats will dry imperfectly and slowly. In this case, if the ground has been previously sown down to grass, this will be killed upon the spots occupied by the stooks. The sheaves, therefore, should be small, neatly bound, and so arranged as to allow a free circulation of air around them. Care in this regard will abridge the period of drying, the stooks will touch but a portion of the ground they cover, and the limited spots of grass killed or retarded in growth will be restored by or before the next season by the advances of the surrounding plants.

Stooks of various styles are common. The sheaves may be set up a short distance apart and in a circle, all sloping toward a common center, and neatly capped (Fig. 4).

Sometimes, when the oats are nearly dry enough for the barn, and the weather seems permanently fair, the bundles may be left

unprotected (Fig. 5), or be set up a few together without any cap, covered sometimes, perhaps, by a single sheaf laid horizontally upon the top of them (Figs. 6 and 7).

The more common way, however, and probably the better one, all things considered, is to allow four bundles standing six inches

apart in a line to slant against four others similarly placed at an inclination of some seventy-five or eighty degrees. After placing

a single sheaf at each end of this collection, the whole may be covered with a neat cap formed of two inverted sheaves firmly bound together (Fig. 8). The ways of making sheaves are various,

and the best are those which most perfectly secure the protection

and speedy drying of the grain.