When The Seedling Plants Are Six Or Eight Inches
Long, They Are All Pulled Up, And Transplanted In Straight Lines
Into
other fields, which are overflowed with water; and, when weeds grow up,
they destroy them by covering them up
In the interstices between the
rows of rice, turning the mud over them with their hands. When they are
to sow wheat, barley, pulse, or other grain, they grub up the surface of
the ground superficially, earth, grass, and rook, and mixing this with
some straw, burn all together. This earth, being sifted fine, they mix
with the seed, which they sow in holes made in straight lines, so that
it grows in tufts or rows like the rice. The field is divided into
regular beds, well harrowed both before and after the seed is sown,
which makes them resemble gardens. The rice grounds are meliorated
merely by letting water into them; but for the other grains, where the
soil requires it, they use dung, night-soil, ashes, and the like. For
watering their fields, they use the machine mentioned by Martini in the
preface to his Atlas, being entirely constructed of wood, and the same
in principle with the chain-pump.
In order to procure salt, as all the shores are of mud instead of sand,
they pare off in summer the superficial part of this mud, which has been
overflowed by the sea-water, and lay it up in heaps, to be used in the
following manner: Having first dried it in the sun, and rubbed it into a
fine powder, they dig a pit, the bottom of which is covered with straw,
and from the bottom a hollow cane leads through the side of the pit to a
jar standing below the level of the bottom.
Enter page number
PreviousNext
Page 902 of 910
Words from 245205 to 245503
of 247546
