a building to lay or store corn in, especially that designed to be kept a considerable time.

Sir Henry Wotton advises to make it look towards the north, because that quarter is the coolest and most temperate. Mr Worlidge observes, that the best granaries are built of brick, with quarters of timber wrought in the inside, to which the boards may be nailed, with which the inside of the granary must be lined so close to the bricks, that there may not be any room left for vermin to shelter themselves. There may be many stories one above another, which should be near the one to the other; because the shallower the corn lies, it is the better, and more easily turned.

The two great cautions to be observed in the erecting of granaries are, to make them sufficiently strong, and to expose them to the most drying winds. The ordering of the corn in many parts of England, particularly in Kent, is thus: To separate it from dust and other impurities after it is threshed, they toss it with shovels from one end to the other of a long and large room; the lighter substances fall down in the middle of the room, and the corn only is carried from side to side or end to end of it. After this they screen the corn, and then bringing it into the granaries, it is spread about half a foot thick, and turned from time to time about twice in a week; once a-week they also repeat the screening it. This sort of management they continue about two months, and after that they lay it a foot thick for two months more; and in this time they turn it once a-week, or twice if the season be damp, and now and then screen it again. After about five or fix months they raise it to two feet thickness in the heaps, and then they turn it once or twice in a month, and screen it now and then. After a year, they lay it two and a half or three feet deep, and turn it once in three weeks or a month, and screen it proportionably. When it has lain two years or more, they turn it once in two months, and screen it once a-quarter; and how long ever it is kept, the oftener the turning and screening are repeated, the better the grain will be found to be.—It is proper to leave an area of a yard wide on every side of the heap of corn, and other empty spaces, into which they turn and toss the corn as often as they find occasion. In Kent they make two square holes at each end of the floor, and one round in the middle, by means of which they throw the corn out of the upper into the lower rooms, and so up again, to turn and air it the better. Their screens are made with two partitions, to separate the dust from the corn, which falls into a bag, and when sufficiently full this is thrown away, the pure and good corn remaining behind. Corn has by these means been kept in our granaries 30 years; and it is observed, that the longer it is kept the more flour it yields in proportion to the corn, and the purer and whiter the bread is, the superfluous humidity only evaporating in the keeping. At Zurich in Switzerland, they keep corn 80 years, or longer, by the same sort of methods.

The public granaries at Dantzick are seven, eight or nine stories high, having a funnel in the midst of each floor to let down the corn from one to another. They are built so securely, that though every way surrounded with water, the corn contracts no damp, and the vessels have the convenience of coming up to the walls to be loaded. The Ruffians preserve their corn in subterranean granaries of the figure of a sugar-loaf, wide below and narrow at top; the sides are well plastered, and the top covered with stones. They are very careful to have the corn well dried before it is laid into these storehouses, and often dry it by means of ovens; the summer dry weather being too short to effect it sufficiently.—Dantzick is the grand storehouse or repository of all the fruitful kingdom of Poland. The wheat, barley, and rye, of a great part of the country, are there laid up in parcels of 20, 30, or 60 lasts in a chamber, according to the size of the room; and this they keep turning every day or two, to keep it sweet and fit for shipping. A thunder storm has sometimes been of very terrible consequences to these stores. All the corn of the growth of former years has been found so much altered by one night's thunder, that though over night it was dry, fit for shipping or keeping, and proper for uses of any sort, yet in the morning it was found clammy and sticking. In this case, there is no remedy but the turning of all such corn two or three times a-day for two months or longer; in which time it will sometimes come to itself, though sometimes not. This effect of thunder and lightning is only observed to take place in such corn as is not a year old, or has not sweated thoroughly in the straw before it was threshed out. The latter inconvenience is easily prevented by a timely care; but as to the former, all that can be done is carefully to examine all stores of the last year's corn after every thunder storm, that if any of this have been so affected, it may be cured in time; for a neglect of turning will certainly utterly destroy it.

According to Vitruvius's rules, a granary should always be at the top of a house, and have its openings only to the north or east, that the corn may not be exposed to the damp winds from the south and west, which are very destructive to it; whereas the contrary ones are very necessary and wholesome to it, serving Granary. to cool and dry it from all external humidity, from whatever cause. There must also be openings in the roof to be set open in dry weather, partly to let in fresh air, and partly to let out the warm effluvia which are often emitted by the corn. The covering of the roofs should always be of tiles, because in the worst seasons, when the other openings cannot be safe, there will always be a considerable inlet for fresh air, and a way out for the vapours by their joinings, which are never close. If there happen to be any windows to the south, great care must be taken to shut them up in moist weather, and in the time of the hot southern winds. There must never be a cellar, or any other damp place under a granary, nor should it ever be built over stables; for in either of these cases the corn will certainly suffer by the vapours, and be made damp, in one, and ill-tasted in the other.

M. du Hamel and Dr Hales recommend various contrivances for ventilating or blowing fresh air through corn laid up in granaries or ships, in order to preserve it sweet and dry, and to prevent its being devoured by weevils or other insects. This may be done by nailing wooden bars or laths on the floor of the granary about an inch distant from each other, when they are covered with hair-cloth only; or at the distance of two or three inches, when coarse wire-work, or basket-work of osier is laid under the hair-cloth, or when an iron plate full of holes is laid upon them. These laths may be laid across other laths, nailed at the distance of 15 inches, and two or more deep, that there may be a free passage for the air under them. The under laths must come about six inches short of the wall of the granary at one end of them; on which end a board is to be set edgewise, and sloping against the wall: by this disposition a large air-pipe is formed, which having an open communication with all the interstices between and under the bars, will admit the passage of air below forcibly through a hole at the extremity of it, into all the corn in the granary, that will consequently carry off the moist exhalations of the corn. The ventilators for supplying fresh air may be fixed against the wall, on the inside or outside of the granary, or under the floor, or in the ceiling; but wherever they are fixed, the handle of the lever that works them must be out of the granary, otherwise the person who works them would be in danger of suffocation, when the corn is fumed with burning brimstone, as is sometimes done for destroying weevils. Small moveable ventilators will answer the purpose for ventilating corn in large bins in granaries, and may be easily moved from one bin to another. If the granary or corn ship be very long, the main air-pipe may pass lengthwise along the middle of it, and convey air, on both sides, under the corn. In large granaries, large double ventilators laid on each other, may be fixed at the middle and near the top of the granary, that they may be worked by a wind-mill fixed on the roof of the building, or by a water-mill. The air is to be conveyed from the ventilators through the several floors to the bottom of the granary, with branching trunks to each floor, by means of which the air may be made to pass into a large trunk along the adjoining cross walls: from these trunks several lesser trunks, about four inches wide, are to branch off, at the distance of three or four feet from each other, which are to reach through the whole length of the granary, and their farther ends are to be closed: seams of \( \frac{1}{10} \) or \( \frac{1}{12} \) of an inch are to be left open at the four joinings of the boards, where they are nailed together, that the air may pass through them into the corn. In some of these lesser trunks there may be sliding shutters, in order to stop the passage of the air through those trunks which are not covered with corn; or to ventilate one part of the granary more briskly than others, as there may be occasion. There must also be wooden shutters, hung on hinges at their upper part, so as to shut close of themselves; these must be fixed to the openings in the walls of the granary on their outside: by these means they will readily open to give a free passage for the ventilating air, which ascends through the corn, to pass off; but will instantly shut when the ventilation ceases, and thereby prevent any dampness of the external air from entering: to prevent this, the ventilation should be made only in the middle of dry days, unless the corn, when first put in, is cold and damp.

In lesser granaries, where the ventilators must be worked by hand, if these granaries stand on staddles, so as to have their lowest floor at some distance from the ground, the ventilators may be fixed under the lowest floor, between the staddles, so as to be worked by men standing on the ground, without or within the granary. A very commodious and cheap ventilator may be made for small granaries, by making a ventilator of the door of the granary; which may be easily done by making a circular screen, of the size of a quarter of a circle, behind the door: but in order to this, the door must be open, not inwards but outwards of the granary, so that as it falls back, it may be worked to and fro in the screen; which must be exactly adapted to it in all parts of the circular side of the screen, as well as at the top and bottom. But there must be a stop at about eight or ten inches distance from the wall, to prevent the door's falling back farther; that there may be room for a valve in the screen to supply it with air; which air will be driven in by the door, through a hole made in the wall near the floor, into the main air-trunk, in which there must be another valve over the hole in the wall, to prevent the return of the air.

To destroy weevils and other insects with which Granaries are apt to be infested.—The preservation of grain from the ravages of insects may be best effected by timely and frequent screening, and ventilation; as little or no inconvenience will follow corn or malt lodged dry, but what evidently results from a neglect of these precautions. For, whether the obvious damage arise from the weevil, the moth, or the beetle, that damage has ceased at the time the vermin make their appearance under either of these species, they being, when in this last state of existence, only propagators of their respective kinds of vermiculi; which, while they continue in that form, do the mischief.

In this last, or insect state, they eat little, their principal business being to deposit their ova (eggs), which unerring instinct prompts them to do where large collections of grain furnish food for their successors while in a vermicular state. It is therefore the business of industry to prevent future generations of these ravagers, by destroying the eggs previous to their hatching; and this is best accomplished by frequent screening, and exposure to draughts of wind or fresh air. By frequently stirring the grain, the cohesion of their ova is broken, and the nidus of those minute worms is destroyed, which on hatching collect together, and spin or weave numerous nets of a cob-web like substance for their security. To these nets they attach, by an infinity of small threads, many grains of corn together, first for their protection, and then for their food. When their habitations are broken and separated by the screen, they fall through its small interstices, and may be easily removed from the granary with the dust. Those that escape an early screening will be destroyed by subsequent ones, while the grain is but little injured; and the corn will acquire thereby a superior purity. But by inattention to this, and sometimes by receiving grain already infected into the granary, these vermin, particularly the weevil, will in a short time spread themselves in that state everywhere upon its surface, and darken even the walls by their number. Under such circumstances, a hen or hens, with new hatched chickens, if turned on the heap, will traverse, without feeding (or very sparingly so) on the corn, wherever they spread; and are seemingly insatiable in the pursuit of these insects. When the numbers are reduced within reach, a hen will fly up against the walls, and brush them down with her wings, while her chickens seize them with the greatest avidity. This being repeated as often as they want food, the whole species will in a day or two be destroyed. Of the phalena (moth), and the small beetle, they seem equally voracious: on which account they may be deemed the most useful instruments in nature for eradicating these noxious and destructive vermin. See VERMIN, Destruction of.