oss 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.

The seed is frequently threshed with the ordinary threshing machine, but
in many instances it is also threshed with a clover huller. The huller
does the work less quickly, but probably, on the whole, more perfectly.
Threshing machines, with or even without certain adjustments in the
arrangement of the teeth in the cylinder and concave, and with extra
screens, are now doing the work with much despatch, and with a fair
measure of satisfaction. But the opinion is held by competent judges
that a machine that would more completely combine the qualities of the
thresher and the huller would be still more satisfactory. It is easily
possible to have the crop too dry to thresh in the best condition, and
care should be taken to regulate the feed in threshing so that the
alfalfa will