THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST [November t, 1889. 
sown broadcast on the surface of the water by men 
who stand upon the embankments on those fields that 
are to be used as a sort of nursery for the rest of the 
land. Probably this process is referred to iu Ecclesi- 
astes : " Cast thy bread upon the waters : for thou 
shalt find it after many days." 
When the young rice has pushed its way through 
the water, and is about eight inches high, the labour of 
taansplanting from the nurseries to the rest of the 
farm lands must begin. 
The plants are pulled up, roots and all, and piled in 
large baskets and taken to the fields where they are to 
be finally transplanted. The operation is generally car- 
ried on in the midst of heavy rain, the labourers 
Btanding up nearly to their ankles in water and slusb, 
and the stooping posture all day long makes the work 
very arduous. They protect their hearts and bodies 
with a sort of umbrella or thatch made of palm-leaves. 
Thus attired, the worker presents rather a comic appear- 
ance when seen for the first time, looking from behind 
not unlike a crab or tortoise walking on its bind-legs. 
The women and children are engaged in planting out, 
and half the village will turn out to plant for Tulsi Das 
one day, and Hurri Pandoo the next, and so on, each 
helping the other in proportion till the whole of the 
fields are plantfd. 
The transplanting process is thus described : — 
"A bundle of seedlings being laid across the arm of 
each person, all standing in a row, a cuple of the young 
plants are disengaged from the bundle with the right 
hand ai d stuck in the ground, or rather mud, in rows 
ahout a f«'0' apart with the same distance between the 
plants. Sometimes a forked stick is used, with whi< h 
the plants are deftly drawn from the bundle and p ant°d 
with a slight thrus r in the soft soil ; this obviates the 
fa''gueofthe stooping posture when the hand only is 
employed. The operat ! on proceeds at a rapid pace, the 
seedlings being put down almost as fast as one can 
count. After the transplanting no further care is givfn 
to the crop until it be ( 'inR to ripen ; no weeding i^ 
ever thought of, nor is any manure ever apnLeri to the 
ground before planting ; all is left to nature."* 
Archdeacon Grey, in his book on China, has given 
the following very picturesque description of a rice- 
field at the various stages : — 
"So quickly does the rice-plant grow, that in the 
course of a few days the whole country presents a rich 
green appearance. Perhaps one of the most charming 
scenes on which I ever gazed was the vale of Manta, 
in the island of Formosa, seen from the slopes of one 
of the neighbouring mountains when the rice-plants 
were putting on the fresh green of their early 
growth. . . . 
" After the rice has been planted the farmer must 
see that his lands are well supplied with water, for a 
scarcity of that element would prove fatal. In general 
the rains, which fall at such seasons in heavy showers, 
are enough for this purpose. The labourer must 
watch the plants carefully lest they should be des- 
troyed by noxious weeds. A labourer who observes a 
weed growing in close proximity to a plant imme- 
diately removes the latter, so as to destroy the weed, 
after which he replaces the plant. It is the duty ot 
other labourers to gather a kind of worm, like our 
common earth-worm in form and size, and said to be 
very destructive to the rice-plant. These worms are 
not thrown away, but conveyed to the various markets, 
and sold to ready purchasers as a delicate article of 
diet. There is also an insect resembling a grass-hopper 
by which the rice crops in China are often in danger 
of being blighted or destroyed, and which flies about in 
large numbers. 
"When the rice is ripe unto harvest — generally n 
the month of June, i.e., one hundred days after it was 
first sown — the reapers come upon the field. Bach 
reaper is provided with a sickle, which bears a strong 
resemblance to the reaping-hooks in use in Great, Britain. 
In some of the agricultural districts reapers gather only 
the tops of the ears of rice. To th's mode of reaping 
grain a reference is made in the Book of Job (xxiv. 24), 
win re it is written, 'They are taken out, of the way as 
all other, and cut off as the tops of the ears of corn.' 
Forbes's" ' r Bri 7 IshBurma, 1878," page 104. 
And again in Isaiah (xvii. 5), ' And it shall be as when 
the harvest-man gathereth the corn, and reapeth the ears 
with his arm : and it shall be as he that gathereth ears 
in the valley of Bephaim.' According to this mode the 
ears are cut off near the top, the straw being left 
standing. As it is cut the grain is bound into small 
sheaves, each of which is placed on the ground in an 
upright position. In this position, however, the sheaves 
are not allowed to remain for any length of time ; they 
are threshed then and there by labourers, who take 
them in their hands and strike them with force against 
inner sides of tubs, into which, of course, the grains 
fall. Certain kinds of rice, however, cannot be threshed 
in this way ; and it is customary far the labourer to 
carry the sheaves of this rice to th« homestead on 
bamboo rods, so that they may be threshed there by 
flails. The threshing does not take place in a barn, but 
on a threshing-floor, with one of which every farm is 
provided. Before the sheaves are laid on this floor 
is very carefully swept. To this careful cleansing of 
the threshing-fioor an allusion is surely made in the 
Gospel of St. Matthew (iii. 12), where St. John the 
Baptist describes our Lord as one 'whose fan is in his 
hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather 
his w v eat into the garner.' 
" According to the Book of the Prophet Isaiah fxxviii. 
27) and the Book of Buth (ii. 17) this mode of threshing 
grain is very ancient. It would appear, however, that 
the Hebrews principally used the flail in threshing small 
quantities of era in, or for lighter kinds, such as vetches, 
dill, or cummin." 
M e must, however, introduce one or two details 
omitted by Dr. Grey. The rice-fields are weeded 
once or twice before harvest ; all the villagers help 
each other, a« they do at transplanting, so as to com- 
plete the whole of ear-h field at the same time. The 
fields are kept covered with wa'er until about fourteen 
davs before harvest, when the supply is cut off and the 
grain ripens and turns yellow. 
Perhaps one of the finest sights earth can 3how is 
often to be witnessed when the r'ce ripens, though it 
is a great grievance to the husbandman : flocks of birds, 
green parroquets, and crowds of other varieties come 
in such immense numbers, that were the crops not 
clos°ly watched from ea-lv morn till night there would 
he little left to repay the culHva f or for his labour. 
Boys are perched up in small pieeon-house looking 
strnctu-es on the top of bamboo piles some six f een or 
eignteen feet high, for protection from wild beasts. 
Here they scream and yell all day long, besides having 
loose bamboo rattles attached to cords, at different 
parts of the field, tied to one rope, which tbey pull 
occasionally. Even this is not always effective; for 
instance, Carolina rice cannot be grown in Burma 
because it ripens some six weeks sooner than the 
general crop, and the birds manage to carry off so 
much of the isolated patch, when they can get no other, 
that its cultivation has in consequence been abandoned 
in the few cases in which it has been tried. 
In British Burma rice can be so cheaply cultivated, 
and the land is so well adapted for its growth, that 
this has in the last thirty years become the centre of the 
rice-supply of the whole world. 
The rainfall is so heavy that the whole country is 
idundated completely from one range of hills to the 
other. The only traffio that can be then carried on is 
in boats. The villages are built either on piles or on 
elevated clumbs of land, and cattle are stabled and 
grain stored, and the people live, during the rains, in 
a condition not unlike that which existed in the time 
of the lake-dwellings. , 
The heavy rainfall flooding the whole country enables 
the cultivator to dispense with those expensive husban- 
dry operations — such as levelling the fiel^V, making 
embankments, &c. — which are so necessary in other 
countries. The Burmese do not even observe the rota- 
tion of crops or manure the land. On the other 
hand, they crop the land only once a year ; while in 
( hina and parts of India three crops are. fathered — - 
two of rice and one of other grain. It is common, 
indeed, in many parts to take two crops of rice off the 
same land in one year. Mr. Orauford, a good authority, 
says that he has seen fields which have produced two 
