Somewhere about twelve days after the sowing the shoots appear above ground, when the "braird" is about four inches high. Occasionally there is an attack of "grub," or cut-worm; but the damage is never serious, a watering destroying the pest, and some seed sown on the blanks caused by the worm soon make good the damage. Rolling with a press roller has been found to materially stop the destruction. Eighty days after sowing, or when the crop has attained a height of two feet, it receives its first watering; forty days afterwards its second and last. Sixty days after the final irrigation the crop will be ripe for harvest. The method of harvesting--reaping--is by small hand hooks, men, women, and boys turning out to work at midnight, reaping till seven a.m., subsequently gathering the unbound sheaves into rows, and afterwards gleaning, finishing up about nine a.m. The foremen then distribute to the reapers one sheaf for thirty-five, as payment in kind. The reason for reaping the crop by night is that, if performed in the daytime, while the heat is great, the grain would shed, the dews at night preventing this loss. Reaping by self-binders has been tried, but the shedding of grain was excessive, as they could only be worked in the daytime; while the farm labourer was not qualified to work such a complicated machine. Labour is so cheap that it is not necessary to resort to labour-saving machinery. The sheaves (unbound) are transported from the fields to the threshing-floor by camels, carts drawn by oxen, or mules. The sheaves are then placed in a circle measuring twenty yards in diameter. Four, five, or more pairs of oxen, each pair attached to a Norag, circle round on the top of the grain, and when it has been threshed out and the straw cut and bruised by the revolving discs and the feet of the oxen, it is thrown into a heap in the centre. Fresh sheaves are added to the circle as they arrive. When all the grain has been threshed the next process is the winnowing by throwing the cut straw and grain into the air vertically by means of a five-pronged wooden fork. The cut straw, _Tibn_, is carried by the wind to a distance, while the grain falls near to the operator.