EARTHS. 277 



broad, flat, and fa low, that for fome hours, 

 •when the flood is at higheft, they look rather 

 dike great feas than like corn fields. This 

 continual humidity mud naturally make the 

 clayey ground fwampy and morally, and ac- 

 cordingly the husbandmen rauft be up to their 

 knees in it when they work, before they can 

 get a folid ground. 



It mould feem that a foil which is every 

 twelfth hour under water, mud be entirely de- 

 prived by it of all fatnefs and power of pro- 

 ducing corn, and become unfit for cultivation : 

 and that even when the water fhould bring 

 fomething on it, it would again be waflied 

 .away when the water runs off; and that there- 

 fore manuring would be of no ufe. And in- 

 deed the wet rice-fields get no other manuring 

 than the flumps of the rice, which are dug in 

 and left to moulder. Notwithflanding this, 

 thefe fields annually produce a very plentiful 

 crop. As often as the water overflows the 

 fields, it leaves behind it a flime which makes 

 the foil fruitful ; for the tide, which comes up 

 from the fea, is more faline and dirty than the 

 ebb, which is clearer when it runs off ; befides 

 this, the ebbing retires at firfl but flowly, and 

 is already run off from the rice-fields before 

 T 3. it 



