VOL. XXIir.J PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS. 6Q5 



and dried in the shade. The bing tea is the second growth in April ; and singlo 

 the last in May and June, bot^ dried a little in tatches or pans over the fire. 

 The tea shrub, being an evergreen, is in flower from October to January, and 

 the seed is ripe in September and October following, so that one may gather 

 both flowers and seed at the same time. 



Le Compte is mistaken in saying that the Chinese are wholly strangers to the 

 art of grafting; for I have seen a great many of his paradoxical tallow-trees in- 

 grafted here, besides some other trees. When they ingraft, they do not slit 

 the stock, as we do, but cut a small slice ofi^ the outside of the stock, to which 

 they apply the graft, being cut sloping on one side, agreeable to the slice cut 

 from the stock, bringing up the bark of the slice upon the outside of the graft, 

 they tie all together, covering with straw and mud as we do. 



The commentator on Magalhen seems doubtful in the length of the Chinese 

 che or cubit. Here they have two sorts, one of 13-V English inches, which 

 the merchants commonly use : the other is of 11 inches, used by carpenters, 

 and also in geographical measures. The bean, or mandarin broth, so frequently 

 mentioned in the Dutch Embassy, and other authors, is only an emulsion made 

 of the seed of sesamum and hot water. Their chief employments here are 

 fishing and agriculture. In fishing, they use several sorts of nets and lines, as 

 we do ; but because they have large banks of mud in some places, the fisher- 

 man, to go more easily on them, has contrived a small frame, about 3 or 4 feet 

 long, not much larger than a hen's-trough, elevated a little at each end, in 

 which he rests upon one knee, leaning his arms on a cross stick, raised as high 

 as his breast, and putting out the other foot often on the mud, he pushes for- 

 ward his frame, and so carries himself along in it. 



As to their agriculture, all their fields, where any thing is planted, whether 

 high or low, are made into such plots as may retain the water on them when 

 they please. They plough up their ground with one buffalo, or one cow. Where 

 they are to sow rice, they prepare the fields very well, by clearing it of all man- 

 ner of weeds, moistening to a pulp, and smoothing it with a frame drawn 

 across ; on which they sow the rice very thick, and cover it only with water 

 for 2 or 3 inches high, and when it has grown 6 or 8 inches long, they pull it 

 up by the roots, and transplant it, by tufts in a straight line, to fields overflown 

 with water ; and where a field is subject to weeds, when the water dries up they 

 prevent their growth in overturning the mud with their hands in the interstices 

 where the rice is planted. When they sow wheat, barley, pulse, and other 

 grain, they grub up some superficial earth, grass, and roots, and with some 

 straw they burn all together ; this earth being sifted fine, they mix with the 

 seed, which they sow in holes made in a straight line, which thus grows up in 



