After treading out or threshing the next process is to winnow the corn (mengirei), which is done precisely in the same manner as practised by us.  Advantage being taken of a windy day, it is poured out from the sieve or fan; the chaff dispersing whilst the heavier grain falls to the ground.  This simple mode seems to have been followed in all ages and countries, though now giving place, in countries where the saving of labour is a principal object, to mechanical contrivances.

In order to clear the grain from the husk, by which operation the padi acquires the name of rice (bras), and loses one half of its measured quantity, two bamboos of the former yielding only one of the latter, it is first spread out in the sunshine to dry (jumur), and then pounded in large wooden mortars (lesung) with heavy pestles (alu) made of a hard species of wood, until the outer coat is completely separated from it, when it is again fanned.  This business falls principally to the lot of the females of the family, two of whom commonly work at the same mortar.  In some places (but not frequently) it is facilitated by the use of a lever, to the end of which a short pestle or pounder is fixed; and in others by a machine which is a hollow cylinder or frustum of a cone, formed of heavy wood, placed upon a solid block of the same diameter, the contiguous surfaces of each being previously cut in notches or small grooves, and worked backwards and forwards horizontally by two handles or transverse arms; a spindle fixed in the centre of the lower cylinder serving as an axis to the upper or hollow one.  Into this the grain is poured, and it is thus made to perform the office of the hopper at the same time with that of the upper, or movable stone, in our mills.  In working it is pressed downwards to increase the friction, which is sufficient to deprive the padi of its outer coating.

The rice is now in a state for sale, exportation, or laying up.  To render it perfectly clean for eating, a point to which they are particularly attentive, it is put a second time into a lesung of smaller size, and, being sufficiently pounded without breaking the grains, it is again winnowed by tossing it dexterously in a flat sieve until the pure and spotless corns are separated from every particle of bran.  They next wash it in cold water and then proceed to boil it in the manner before described.

RICE AS AN ARTICLE OF TRADE.

As an article of trade the Sumatran rice seems to be of a more perishable nature than that of some other countries, the upland rice not being expected to keep longer than twelve months, and the lowland showing signs of decay after six.  At Natal there is a practice of putting a quantity of leaves of a shrub called lagundi (Vitex trifolia) amongst it in granaries, or the holds of vessels, on the supposition of its possessing the property of destroying or preventing the generation of weevils that usually breed in it.  In Bengal it is said the rice intended for exportation