ped off and dropped; the bunch
of fruit heads, topping a 6-inch section of clean stalk or straw is
handed to a person who may be called the binder. This person in all
harvests I have seen was a woman. She binds all the grain three,
four, or five persons can pluck; and when there is one binder for
every three gatherers the binder finds some time also to gather.

The binder passes a small, prepared strip of bamboo twice around
the palay stalks, holds one end between her teeth and draws the
binding tight; then she twists the two ends together, and the bunch
is secure. The bunch, the manojo of the Spaniard, the sin fing-e'
of the Igorot, is then piled up on the binder's head until a load
is made. Before each bunch is placed on the pile the fruitheads are
spread out like an open fan. These piles are never completed until
they are higher than the woman's arm can reach -- several of the last
bunches being tossed in place, guided only by the tips of the fingers
touching the butt of the straw. The women with their heads loaded
high with ripened grain are striking figures -- and one wonders at
the security of the loads.

When a load is made it is borne to the transportation baskets in some
part of the harvested section of the sementera, where it is gently slid
to the earth over the front of the head as the woman stoops forward. It
is loaded into the basket at once unless there is a scarcity of binders
in the field, in which case it awaits the completion of the harvest.

In all agricultural labors the Igorot is industrious, yet his humor,
ever present with him, brings relief from continued toil. The harvest
field is no exception, since there is much quiet gossip and jest
during the labors.

In 1903 rice was first harvested May 2. The harvest continued one
month, the crop of a sementera being gathered here and there as it
ripened. The Igorot calls this first harvest month the "moon of the
small harvest." During June the crop is ripened everywhere, and the
harvest is on in earnest; the Igorot speaks of it as the "moon of
the all harvest."

I had no view of the harvest of millet or maize; however, I have seen
in the pueblo much of each grain of some previous harvest. The millet
I am told, is harvested similarly to the rice, and the clean-stalked
bunches are tied up in the same way -- only the bunches are four or
five times larger.

The fruit head, or ears, of the maize is said to be plucked off the
stalks in the fields as the