The crop requires very little tillage. The seed is sown broadcast, in the month of April, at the rate of one bushel to an acre. The harvesting will take place in June and July. The land is sufficiently seeded to produce two crops, which are sometimes gathered in one year. A yield of forty bushels to an acre is not uncommon. The seed weighs sixty pounds to the bushel. Mustard was first introduced as a table condiment in the year 1720 by an old lady named Clements, residing in Durham. It is from this fact that the well-known Durham mustard takes its name. She prepared it in a crude form by grinding the seed in a small hand mill. The product was nothing more than the crushed seed. This was passed through mesh sieves to separate the bran from the husk. The secret of this process she kept for many years. Mustard was used as a medicine by the ancients and is spoken of in history by Theophrastus and Galen and others. Its use as a condiment is spoken of by Shakespeare in “Taming of the Shrew,” Act IV, Scene III. The mustard which was made in the time of King George, who gave it his approval, was made from the wild charlock S. arvensis and was prepared by Lady Clements. But as manufacturing gradually developed, in order to cater to public taste, the seed meal has been changed to the genuine mustard of to-day, which is the farina or flour of the black or white mustard seed, made from the interior of the seed, which is separated from the outer coat or shell. Mustard seed contains so much oil that it cannot be ground on common burr stones. It is prepared for market by first passing it through a winnowing machine to remove the dust and any other foreign material; it is next crushed by passing it between rollers; then it is placed in silk bags made for that purpose, and the volatile oil is extracted by hydraulic pressure. After the cake is dried it is put into pots and is stamped or pounded by a system of battery pounding, or by means of roller mills, in which the pounders vary in number from two to four, eight, twelve, or sixteen. The pounding or stamping continues until the cake is reduced to the consistency of soft middlings, or to the required powder. It is next scooped out into a trough and more cake is put into the pots. The stamping continues until all the cake is used up. Then it is scooped for bolting on sieves made of silk cloth of fine or coarse mesh, as required, which are set in frames and given a shaking motion by an upright shaft, the meal falling into a receptacle below. The quality of powdered mustard varies much, according to the quality of the mustard seed. Prime seed yields 50 to 60 per cent. of flour, and poor seed will run as low as 28 per cent. It does not pay to prepare poor seed, as the time lost in its preparation would not make up for the cheapness of it.