COUNTRY LIFE
An adjacent wheat-field, from which the produce was safely stacked before the bad weather grew yet worse, was most thoroughly gleaned, and the amount sb recovered was scarcely believable. Yet the gleaners left a good deal ; and returning after the two days of rain found many of the relic ears firmly anchored to the soil. The grain had sprouted both up and down. 'It does not, alas, need earth for its germination, and, I think, one of the most melancholy of sights for the farmer is the green appearance of his stooks or, if the crop is badly laid, even of his uncut crop. I have seen even the walls of a well-harvested stack almost as green as a lawn. Perhaps these unpleasant phenomena are evidence that the sooner the seed for next year's crop is put into the ground the more surely it will establish itself. September is a very yeasty month. The few fields ploughed early are already green with weeds, and their destruction will be satisfactorily easy.
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