— 105 — The latter statement does not, however, take into account the results of employing a modern threshing plant, which our financial resources are inadequate to purchase, and its absence affords a striking example of the losses involved by the primitive methods of harvesting in general vogue. Last season's wheat crop was cut by the end of March and stacked on one of the feddans in the field. A portion of the feddan was prepared as a threshing floor by coating it with zibla, the ordinary native method.

This operation cost £E 1.330 for labour alone.

Threshing was commenced at once. When this was finished, at the end of May, the feddan was watered before ploughing, and the quantity of wheat which germinated induced the writer to attempt a calculation of the loss sustained.

Ten squares, each 5 cm. by 5 cm., were marked out at random over the threshing floor and neighbourhood. The seedlings growing in each square were counted and the average found to be approximately seventy. Th*e following figures speak for themselves :—Seventy seedlings per 25 square cm.117,600,000 per feddan. As 800 grains weigh one ounce, the total loss from this threshing floor and neighbourhood was 9,187 lb. Eeducing this figure to a half for safety's sake, and taking the normal price of wheat as five milliemes per rotl, the total loss from this one floor was at least £E.22.965.

Some ten or twelve similar floors were employed for threshing the native wheat crop on land supplied with water from the farm pumps, with an equivalent multiplication of this loss.

It is unfortunate that this is the only loss that can be estimated, as the crop was not weighed as it was cut. It remained stacked in the open for three months, and the amount eaten by birds, vermin and stray animals, to say nothing of the quantity of " tibn " (threshed straw) blown away during threshing, may be imagined.

If a threshing machine with a capacity of 35-50 bushels per hour had been available for dealing with the crop, the operation would have been completed in ten hours at a running cost of not more than £E.l, when the plant would have been available for the treatment of the native crop. As it was, it took three months at a cost of £E. 7.500 for threshing on the one floor, in addition to £E. 1.330 for laying the floor, and £E.2.700 wages of a watchman ; to which has still to be added wheat to the value of £E.22 left on the ground.