201 



When the cutting was finished the sheaves were g-athered and 

 taken to a smooth piece of ground, where they were opened and 

 exposed to the sun. At night the whole Avas taken np in mats 

 and put under shelter. 



Threshing began two da\s after hy beating the ears with 

 sticks, which causes the gTain to drop to the ground. Tlir small 

 amount of broken straw which was on top was gathered by hand, 

 leaving the paddy and ehalf below. A first winnowing was done 

 with the " neeru."' a tray made of bamboo strips, to separate the 

 grain from the finer pieces of broken straw, and a further winnow- 

 ing was gone through to se])arate the light empty grains from the 

 full grains, an operation recpiiring a great deftness of han<L 



The crop taken oft' the l/Ki acre plot planted amounted to 16^5 

 gantangs, which corresponds to a yield of 163 gantangs, weighing 

 937 lbs. per acre and is nuuli below what might be expected from 

 a trial made under such generally favourahle conditions as des- 

 cribed above. 



But yet, from the first, the writer was under no illusion as to 

 the possibilities of failure of this plot. It might give a satisfac- 

 tory return — and it might not. An undraiiied swamp under a 

 semi-aquatic vegetation of '" Pandanus " and wild grasses, the land, 

 until it was broken up, constituted an ideal breeding -ground for 

 fungoid and insect pests, and it was a question whether after the 

 thorough tillage (and thereby aeration) which it received, these 

 pests would rally quick enough seriously to injure a crop 

 new to it and a (piick cro]) at that, Certain rotations, as it is 

 well known, are devised on the immunity of certain crops to 

 pests which attack other crops. If the paddy crop had matured, 

 as some races do, in three months, it would have been a bumper 

 crop but even at an early stage, when Mr. Richards, Ento- 

 mologist to the F. M. S. Agricultural Department, saw it, the cro]) 

 was already seriously attacked by a grub which he identified as 

 " Schoenohins hipunctifer/' a grub frequently found in stems of 

 rice throughout India, and from that time, empty white ears were 

 every day more and more conspicuoits throughout the field. This 

 borer belongs to the family of " Pyralidae " which, of all insect 

 pests, is according to Lefroy's "Indian Insect Life" one of the 

 most destructive to crops and stored products. The damage is 

 done while in the larval state, it is hidden in the stem and its 

 presence is only revealed when the ear of the paddy is actually 

 dead, no grain being formed for want of the material which has 

 gone to feed the grub. 



Added to the toll taken by this pest, the de}>redations of birds 

 seemed likely at one time to finish the crop. By dint of shouting 

 and empty tin-beating, they were not allowed to have it all their 

 own way, but many ears showed a heavy proportion of emptied 

 husks. It is possible that the damage caused by birds is greater 

 in small isolated spots surrounded, as was the case here, by trees 

 and Tvdld vegetation, where they find immediate shelter (to emerge 



