693
the kneeling posture in which he had hitherto worked, andplaces one sheal upright in the centre of the small platform,filling the whole of that space with upright sheaves set aroundthe central one, anti leaning a little towards it. He then getsa straw-rope, with the middle of which he firmly embracesthese upright sheaves, by two or three turns of the rope, andthe assistants fasten the two ends of that rope on opposite sidesof the rick, so as to secure this conical crown of sheaves frombeing thrown over by the wind. A rick carefully built in thismanner, thatched in the way to be afterwards described, willbid defiance to any kind of weather, except a hurricane; andcan even be very little injured by rain coming on before it isthatched; and no good farmer trusts his stack even for aday or two, without thatching, unless from necessity. Eventhe best built stacks are never safe, until they are well thatch-ed. It is proverbially said, A ’well-built stack may be thatch-ed by a boll of grain; that is, it will not lose more than aboll of grain, or six bushels, in consequence .of bad weathercoming on before the thatch can be put on. A rick built asnow described is in the form of a cylinder, surmounted by acircular pyramid or cone. Sometimes the body is in form ofa truncated cone, having the base upwards; or, in other words,the body of the rick is made to widen gradually as it advancesin height.
Every provident husbandman, if circumstances will admit,has a considerable quantity of thatch prepared before harvest,and a number of straw-ropes ready made for binding on thethatch i though it may be remarked, that since threshing-ma-chines were introduced, it has been more difficult to get sum-mer-threshed straw to answer for thatch, that when corn wasthreshed by the Hail . The best straw for this purpose is thatof rye, and wheat-straw is the next best; but, in defect ofboth, the straw of barley or oats must be employed. The strawis all previously drawn, the short straws shaken out, the Jongstraw laid parallel and bound up into sheaves, and the shortstraw made into bunches. The short stratjr is used for the