as long as stack top is large enough; keep middle well piled up.

A stack can be drawn in very rapidly, without danger of taking in water from a protracted rain, even if the outside of the stack grows green, no sheaf will be found wet above the band, and the middle of stack dry, for the buts of outside course will form a thatch roof to protect the stack.

The placing of a few top bundles is a matter of small importance. If a stack has been properly built it will receive but little injury if top bundles should blow off. A strand or two of wire, with sticks or stones at the ends to weight them down, will usually hold the top in place.

RECAPITULATION.

The first load being built straight up and flat on top forms a firm and secure base on which to build the upper structure.

Laying out or putting in the bulge.—This is the most important part of the stack, for it contains the greater part of the grain; by laying out and keeping the stack flat, the work can be done rapidly, and when the stack settles the buts will hang down, for there is nothing to hold them up.

FIGURE SEVEN.

Filling the middle corresponds to putting rafters on a building to support the roof.

SUGGESTIONS.

I have found in the course of a long experience, that a foundation eleven or twelve feet wide and eighteen or twenty feet long, and a stack built in the form of an ellipse, and so as to contain ten or twelve large loads, to be the most convenient and economical. Grain can be put into a stack of this size much more rapidly than in small stacks. If a stack is built much larger it will require more labor to pass the bundles across the stack, and will have to be carried much higher before it is topped out, which takes time and hard work.

The elliptical form I have found the best; with a load driven to the side of the stack, the pitcher is never very far from the stacker; the stack is easily kept balanced, and at threshing time the grain is readily got to the machine. In a round stack of the same size, the stacker gets farther away from the pitcher, and it requires more skill to keep a round stack properly balanced; but if a round stack, after it is finished and settled, looks like an egg standing erect on the large end, that is good enough; it will not take water, and looks well, too. A square stack, or one with corners, is easily kept balanced, but in turning the corners there is too much fullness at the heads of the bundles, and when the stack settles there will usually be a sag on each side to catch water.

Two stakes, one eight and the other ten rods away, and in line with the center of foundation, will sometimes assist the stacker in keeping his stack well balanced, for at a glance he can tell whether the center is in line with the stakes. A man may build, as his fancy dictates, either round, elliptical or square, but in all, the same general principles must be observed—the lower part of the stack built straight up; put in a bulge which settles down around and nearly conceals the lower part, leaving the center of the bulge high; filling the middle to support the center of the top. These are the principles on which good stacking depends. If a man gets them well fixed in his mind and discards the idea that he must keep the middle full from the ground up, he will have but little damaged grain, even in the very worst of seasons. Very small stacks should be built like ordinary stack tops.

A boy to hand bundles is usually more damage than good until a