108 TlMEHRI. 
eddoes and other vegetables. Having secured water, they 
set to work in true Chinese fashion, and reduced the 
height of the land, by digging out certain areas and rais- 
ing others, making the garden ground what it remains to 
this day — a picture of Chinese rural scenery. The low plots 
produce the most magnificent rice and have continued 
to do so for at least 18 years without rest ; and a reason 
for this may be found in the following passage from De 
Bow's Review : — " The Chinese, who pay the greatest 
attention to the cultivation of rice, manure their land 
with all sorts of filth, dung, &c. They preserve all the 
scraping's of pig's hair, the barbers carefully preserving 
the human hair, which is no small quantity where the 
head is shaved, and the cultivators of the soil readily 
purchase this compost at a penny per pound, and barges 
are to be seen on the canals entirely laden with nothing 
else. The Chinese cultivators look upon hair, of what- 
ever nature, as of extreme value in rice cultivation. It is 
not unusual for them to mix lime with the water of 
irrigation, which they consider draws off insects and gives 
warmth to the ground." 
Those who pass to the leeward of the Chinese gar- 
dens of Anna Regina in the spring time will readily 
recognise that this peculiar habit of conserving manurials 
has not been forgotten in British Guiana. Although 
the Chinese thus carry out their inborn habit of 
allowing no matter to go to waste, I do not think the 
rice plant in the deep rich soil of this colony really calls 
for manure. We see crop after crop raised on the same 
land, with a tendency towards improvement rather than a 
falling off ; and when we see the luxuriant crops grown 
in the bottom of canals where the soil is far under atmos- 
