00 fold.

Harte _Essays on Husbandry_, 91, says that the average yield in
England in the middle of the eighteenth century was seven for one,
though he records the case of an award by the Dublin Society in 1763
to an Irish gentleman who raised 50 bushels of wheat from a single
peck of seed! Harte was a parson, but apparently he did not bring the
same unction into his agriculture as did the Rev. Robert Herrick to
the husbandry of his Devonshire glebe, a century earlier. In Herrick's
_Thanksgiving to God for his House_ he sings:

"Lord, 'tis thy plenty dropping hand
That soils my land
And giv'st me for my bushel sown
Twice ten for one.
Thou makst my teeming hen to lay
Her egg each day:
Besides my healthful ewes to bear
Me twins each year."]

[Footnote 96: As the Gallic header here described by Varro is the
direct ancestor of our modern marvellous self-binding harvester, it is
of interest to rehearse the other ancient references to it.

Pliny (_H. N_. XVIII, 72) says:

"In the vast domains of the provinces of Gaul a large hollow frame
armed with teeth and supported on two wheels is driven through the
standing corn, the beasts being yoked behind it, the result being that
the ears are torn off and fall within the frame." Palladius (VII, 2)
goes more into detail:

"The people of the more level regions of Gaul have devised a method of
harvesting quickly and with a minimum of human labour, for thereby a
single ox is made to bear the burden of the entire harvest. A cart is
constructed on two low wheels and is furnished with a square body, of
which the side boards are adjusted to slope upward and outward to make
greater capacity. The front of the body is left open and there across
the width of the cart are set a series of lance shaped teeth spaced to
the distance between the grain stalks and curved upward. Behind the
cart two short shafts are fashioned, like those of a litter, where the
ox is yoked and harnessed with his head towards the cart: for this
purpose it is well to use a well broken and sensible ox, which will
not push ahead of his driver. When this machine is driven through the
standing grain all the heads are stripped by the teeth and are thrown
back and collected in the body of the cart, the straw being left
standing. The machine is so contrived that the driver can adjust its
height to that of the grain. Thus with little going and coming and in
a few short hours the entire harvest is