The yields of seed are also much influenced by moisture. An excess of moisture is more unfavorable to the production of seed than a shortage in the same. Hence, in areas where the rainfall for the season is very abundant, but little seed will be produced. Where irrigation is practiced, the excessive application of water would have a similar effect, though less pronounced in degree; hence, the apportionment of the water to the prospective needs of the seed crop calls for careful adjustment. Where the first crop is grown for seed, where irrigation is practiced, in many instances no water is applied until after the seed crop has been harvested. The seed is ready for being harvested when a majority of the seed-pods assume a dark brown tint. The pods of later formation will still possess a yellow tint, and some of them may still possess the green color. These do not produce seed nearly equal in quality to the pods which ripen earlier. To wait for all the later maturing pods to ripen before harvesting the crop would mean the loss of much of the best seed through shattering. Another test of maturity is made by shelling the pods in the hand. When the seed can be thus shelled in a majority of the pods in a single plant, it is ready for being harvested. Alfalfa seed shatters easily; hence, it is important to harvest the seed crop with promptness when it is ready, to handle it with due carefulness, and in some instances to refrain from handling during the hottest hours of sunshine. The seed crop is sometimes cut with the mower and raked into winrows, and in some instances put up into cocks. When it is handled thus, the aim should be to do the work, as far as this may be practicable, in the early and late hours of the day, but not, of course, while much dew is on the crop. Sometimes the seed is drawn from the winrows to the thresher; in other instances from the cocks, and in yet other instances it is stacked before being threshed, a work that calls for the exercise of much care in the storing of the crop, lest the seed should be injured by heating in the stack. This method of harvesting is usually attended with much loss of seed. There is probably no better way of harvesting alfalfa than to cut it with the self-rake reaper or the binder. The loose sheaves dry quickly, and when lifted, the aim is to carry them directly to the thresher. Less seed, it is considered, will be lost in this way than by the other mode of harvesting given above, and the work is more expeditiously done. But owing to the difficulty in securing a thresher to thresh the seed, it is sometimes found necessary to stack the crop, but in areas where irrigation is practiced such stacking is seldom necessary.