December.  The planters advance about four rupees a beegah to the ryot, who cuts his seed-plant, and brings it into the factory threshing ground, where it is beaten out, cleaned, weighed, and packed in bags.  When the seed has been threshed out and cleaned, it is weighed, and the ryot or cultivator gets four rupees for every maund—­a maund being eighty pounds avoirdupois.  The previous advance is deducted.  The rent or loan account is adjusted, and the balance made over in cash.

Others grow the seed on their own account, without taking advances, and bring it to the factory for sale.  If prices are ruling high, they may get much more than four rupees per maund for it, and they adopt all kinds of ingenious devices to adulterate the seed, and increase its weight.  They mix dust with it, seeds of weeds, even grains of wheat, and mustard, pea, and other seeds.  In buying seed, therefore, one has to be very careful, to reject all that looks bad, or that may have been adulterated.  They will even get old useless seed, the refuse stock of former years, and mixing this with leaves of the neem tree and some turmeric powder, give it a gloss that makes it look like fresh seed.

When you suspect that the seed has been tampered with in this manner, you wet some of it, and rub it on a piece of fresh clean linen, so as to bring off the dye.  Where the attempt has been flagrant, you are sometimes tempted to take the law into your own hands, and administer a little of the castigation which the cheating rascal so richly deserves.  In other cases it is necessary to submit the seed to a microscopic examination.  If any old, worn seeds are detected, you reject the sample unhesitatingly.  Even when the seed appears quite good, you subject it to yet another test.  Take one or two hundred seeds, and putting them on a damp piece of the pith of a plantain tree, mixed with a little earth, set them in a warm place, and in two days you will be able to tell what percentage has germinated, and what is incapable of germination.  If the percentage is good, the seed may be considered as fairly up to the sample, and it is purchased.  There are native seed buyers, who try to get as much into their hands as they can, and rig the market.  There are also European buyers, and there is a keen rivalry in all the bazaars.

The threshing-floor, and seed-cleaning ground presents a busy sight when several thousand maunds of seed are being got ready for despatch by boats.  The dirty seed, full of dust and other impurities, is heaped up in one corner.  The floor is in the shape of a large square, nicely paved with cement, as hard and clean as marble.  Crowds of nearly nude coolies, hurry to and fro with scoops of seed resting on their shoulders.  When they get in line, at right angles to the direction in which the wind is blowing, they move slowly along, letting the seed descend on the heap below, while the wind winnows it, and carries the dust in dense clouds to leeward.  This is