REAPING AND THRESHING IN INDIA.

New Zealand Mail, 30 December 1892, Page 5

REAPING AND THRESHING IN INDIA.

The Indian reaping hook consists of a bit of hard iron six inches in length, an inch in width, curved like an old-fashioned sickle, with a notched edge and short handle. The cost of this implement is four cents. The harvester sits upon his heels, cuts ft handful of straw, which he lays down, then waddles on without rising, cutting about one-twelth of an acre a day, for which he receives money to the value of five cents, boarding himyelf. Sometimes he is paid in grain; at others he receives every thirtieth sheaf. If he cuts carries, threshes and delivers the grain and straw at the owners house he receives onesixteenth of the grain. After this reaper comes a binder, who gathers up the grain and binds into sheaves about the size of the American sheaf. It is then shacked, and after a day or two carted to the threshing floor. The threshing machine consists of a floor or bit of hard ground, a stake, a number of cattle and a driver. The grain straw is piled around the stake on the floor, the cattle are connected by a rope tied to their horns one end of the rope tied to the stake and the driver keeps them going round until thß straw is tramped very fine into what is called bhoosa. This, after the grain is separated from it, is fed to the cattle. The people raise almost insurmountable objections to any other mode of threshing, as this is about the only way in which the straw is made into bhoosa. They do not only thresh to get the grain out, but to break up the straw and particulariy to flatten it, so that the cattle will readily eat it.

The superintendent of agriculture in the Bombay Presidency had a large threshing machine sent from England, and made a contract with a landholder for 50 acres of wheat in order to try the machine. After

the work had commenced the landholder fell upon his knees and piteously begged for the threshing to stop, as it would ruin him, for the cattle could not eat the hard, unbroken stiff straw. An ordinary straw cutter will not do to cut up the straw, as they hold that it must be flattened and made smooth as well as be broken up short. There is real force in this objection, and until it is overcome by an improved machine the people will use the cattle and the threshing floor. In time, when they can be induced to raise green fodder, or preserve grass as hay, or make ensilage, which is being introduced, they may adopt the civilised method of threshing. Yet their system works very well. They have the cattle and plenty of time, for after the wheat harvest they have but little work to do, and the straw is very dry. The winnowing is done with a scoop, called a soop, about eighteen inches wide, mad 9 of reeds, and in shape like a large dustpan. This is filled with grain, straw, and chaff, and held in the wind so that the chaff and straw falling from it is blown from the grain. If there is no wind, two men take a blanket, one at each end, and wave it between them while a third dribbles the grain from the soop. To-day there is probably not a fanning mill used by a cultivator in all these provinces. There are some vised at the large markets and in the English flouring mills. The cultivators are too poor to purchase them, and the landholders will not take the trouble, or be willing to spend their money in this way.