ii82 LIFE : OUTLINES OF GENERAL BIOLOGY 



Here, it is plain, instead of beginning with the individual field, the 

 whole group of rice-growers are conditioned alike by their local and 

 collective water-supply; and they have to make the best of it for 

 all, else it may be the worse for each. Their fields must all be levelled, 

 and banked to the right height, for holding up water in the needed 

 quantity; and so these have gradually arisen and extended, from 

 the vast terrace-systems ranging up the Himalayan valleys and 

 down to the finely graded fields upon the Bengal or other plains. 

 Then, too, beyond the skilled and harmonious adjustment of the 

 local water supply as it naturally comes, dams are needed, to hold 

 it up 2LS high as may be and economise it to the full; and the 

 construction of these reservoirs ranges from simplest "bunds", 

 rudely built and kept up by and for the small village with its 

 associated labour, up to great and massively built, even monumental, 

 tanks; and thence even to artificial lakes, which sometimes, as so 

 notably in old Ceylon, are among the most colossal engineering 

 achievements of antiquity, still in their own way unrivalled, and 

 thus justly admired and wondered at by our foremost modern 

 engineers, though they have lately been learning to control far 

 greater rivers than once filled these. 



Return, however, to the field labour of rice-growers. There is 

 needed, of course, some strenuous howking to loosen the consoli- 

 dated mud- soil; but the old* folks and the children can each and 

 all take well-nigh as efficient a part as strongmen, since putting the 

 small plant into soft mud, and pressing it in lightly with the foot 

 need small effort, though care and patience. And when reaping comes, 

 all hands again can help, since rice is cut by handfuls. AU ages and 

 sexes have thus participated and co-operated; so the result in rice 

 is naturally felt to be not individual, but family property; and the 

 land as well. There is family authority and headship, but this goes 

 by seniority ; as grandfather — or if need be grandmother — presides, 

 or parents, uncles, and aunts, down to brothers in order of age. The 

 young married couples occupy or build additions ; they keep together 

 as far as may be, often to communitary families whose numbers 

 amaze us ; so naturally this distinctive rice-society has had a prime 

 influence over whatever other cereal cultivators there may be. 

 Here, then, is an essential outline (though of course in the merest 

 outline) of a factor of adaptation— if not even basal determination 

 — for the communitary family- system; and thus of the congruent 

 institutions which are so characteristic of these Eastern peoples, and 

 traceable throughout their manners and customs, their laws and 

 morals; in short, their ways and thoughts. Of course the endless 

 regional and social differentiations of all these have to be observed, 

 investigated, and interpreted, but enough here as salient outline. 

 And if verification by independent experiment be asked for — a fair 

 scientific question, though hard to put in operation — here is at least 



