The barley harvest begins in the plains in April, and continues in the hills as late as June. The stalk of the corn is very short, and the stubble is left comparatively very long. The men sit on their haunches to reap, the sickle (Seif) being not unlike our own. The handfuls thus cut are tied round with a stalk, forming little shocks (Ghamûr), and these are stacked in bundles, and then loaded in nets on camels, and carried to the threshing-floors (Beiyâdir or Jurûn) at the villages. An ancient custom--to which the peasantry can assign no origin--is observed in reaping; the corner of the field is left unreaped, and this is given to the “widows and the fatherless;” this corner is called Jerû’ah, and in the same way a bunch of wheat is left on the ground to be gleaned by the poor and helpless (Lev. xix. 9, 10). These gleanings are threshed by the women separately (Ruth ii. 15--17). The threshing-floor is a broad flat space, on open ground, generally high; sometimes the floor is on a flat rocky hill-top, and occasionally it is in an open valley, down which there is a current of air; but it is always situated where most wind can be found, because at the threshing season high winds never occur, and the grain is safely stored before the autumn storms commence. The size of the floor varies, from a few yards to an area of perhaps fifty yards square, and rich villages have sometimes two such floors. The grain is thrown down, and trampled by cattle, or by horses attached to a heavy wooden sledge made of two boards and curved up in front. A boy stands or sits on this, and drives the horse. A number of recesses are sunk in the under side of the sledge, and into these small rough pieces of hard basalt (Hajr es Sôda) are let, which, acting like teeth, tear the corn. This instrument is called Môrej, and is supposed to be that mentioned by Isaiah (xli 15) as “having teeth.” The name is the same as the Hebrew Moreg, and the name Jurn, applied commonly to the threshing-floor, is the Hebrew Goran. In other cases two or four oxen are yoked together and driven round the threshing-floor. I have seen them muzzled, though this is rare (Deut. xxv. 4). The threshed grain is collected on the floor in a conical heap (Sôbeh), and is winnowed by tossing it with a wooden shovel, or with a three-pronged wooden fork. The wind scatters the chaff, and the grain falls round the heap, and it is afterwards sifted. A tithe from the threshed grain is still set apart for the Derwîsh or village priest, as for the Levite of old (Num. xviii. 21), and is called Tazukki, or “alms.” The custom is, however, gradually dying out. The corn is stored in underground granaries, which are carefully concealed, and form traps for the unwary horseman. These granaries (Metâmîr) are often under the protection of the Mukâm, and are therefore excavated near that building. They are circular wells, some four or five feet deep, and the mouths are closed with clay like that used for the house-roofs.