Feb., 1912. Jade. 49 



from which I may be allowed to select one. "The most common form 

 of cultivation (among the Kachin of Upper Burma) is the wasteful 

 process of hill-clearing. The method employed is to select an untouched 

 hill slope, fell the jungle about March and let it lie on the ground till 

 it is thoroughly dry. This is set fire to in June or July, and the surface 

 of the earth is broken up with a rude hoe, so as to mix in the wood ashes. 

 The sowing is of the roughest description. The worker dibbles away 

 with the hoe in his right hand and throws' in a grain or two with his left. 

 The crop is left to take care of itself till it is about a foot high, when it 

 is weeded, and again weeded before the crop gets ripe. The crop is 

 usually reaped about October. The same field cannot be reaped two 

 years running. Usually it has to lie fallow from seven to ten years 

 where the jungle does not grow rapidly, and from four to seven years 

 where the growth is quicker." l 



At the present day, the tribal differences which once prevailed be- 

 tween hoe and plough culture have disappeared to a large extent, though 

 not so much as to escape the eye of a keen observer, and the difference 

 now chiefly rests on economic grounds, as can be seen from the example 

 of Siam where rice is grown in hoe-culture on the rude hills, and by the 

 methods of agriculture on the fertile plains by the same population; 

 the poor hill-people being simply forced to their mode of life by sheer 

 economic necessity. Thus, also, numerous low-class Chinese who took 

 refuge among the wild tribes of the mountains descended to their style 

 of husbandry as an easier manipulation, and the poor colonists on the 

 banks of the Yellow River met with by Mr. Rockhill must have been 

 in a similar condition of wretchedness, for what they did was nothing but 

 a relapse into hoe-culture. From their use of the stone mattock as 

 observed by Mr. Rockhill, — and we shall see later on in another con- 

 nection that stone mattocks have been in use for this purpose through- 

 out the south-east of Asia, — we are justified in concluding that the 

 stone mattock is the mattock employed in hoe-culture, and further that 

 also the ancient stone mattocks found in Shensi and Shantung must 

 have been associated with hoe-culture. It follows from an historical 

 consideration of this subject that these stone mattocks are to be attrib- 

 uted to a non-Chinese population which lived there before the invasion 

 of the Chinese and was gradually absorbed by them, rather than to 

 the Chinese themselves. 



All the specimens from Shantung have been apparently turned to 

 practical purposes; nearly all of them show traces of having been used. 

 The two rectangular chisels illustrated in Plate X fairly agree in shape 



1 Gazetteer of Upper Burma and the Shan States, Vol. I, Part I, p. 424 (Rangoon, 

 1900). This is one of their methods, but in other regions wherever they learned 

 from their Shan and Chinese neighbors, wet paddy cultivation, i.e. agriculture, has 

 been introduced among them. 



