Holiday makers saw many fields golden with wheat, white. with
oats, and brown with barley. They saw a certain number (though harvest is late) patterned by stooks . into aisles and naves. They saw some good crops and some so pestered with charlock, poppy, mayweed, coltsfoot, spurry, bindweed, and the rest that not `! half a tillage mocked the smiling plain." On the scroll of the fields was charactered a critical legend. We have seen no more critical harvest in our time. Last year one of the best crops ever seen—to the eyes—turned out to be one of the worst when put to the test of the threshing machine. Since then the thin hay—at any rate in the South— has been so washed out by the rain that its value has already become inordinate and some small men wonder where the- winter " keep " is coming from. All this means that a; good or bad harvest with good prices for the grain may mean. the difference between surrender and a continuance of the struggle. For the moment one can at least say this Mach, that the crops Iodic well and the price is good.
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