During its growth it requires to be weeded two or three times, to keep the weeds from choking the crop. The seed is sown broadcast in May. This kind of rice is harvested in November, and to collect the crop is still more tedious than in the other case, for it is always gathered earlier and never reaped, in consequence of the grain not adhering to the ear. If it were gathered in any other way, the loss by transportation on the backs of buffaloes and horses, without any covering to the sheaf, would be so great as to dissipate a great portion of the crop. After the rice is harvested, there are different modes of treating it. Some of the proprietors take it home, where it is thrown into heaps, and left until it is desirable to separate it from the straw, when it is trodden out by men and women with their bare feet. For this operation they usually receive a fifth part of the rice. Others stack it in a wet and green state, which subjects it to heat, from which cause the grain contracts a dark colour and an unpleasant taste and smell. The natives, however, impute these defects to the wetness of the season. The crop of both the low and upland rice is usually from thirty to fifty for one: this on old land; but on that which is newly cleared, or which has never been cultivated, the yield is far beyond this. In some soils of the latter description, it is said that for a chupa (seven cubic inches) planted the yield has been a caban. The former is the two-hundred-and-eighth part of the latter. This is not the only advantage gained in planting rice lands, but the saving of labour is equally great; for all that is required is to make a hole with the fingers and place three or four grains in it. The upland rice requires but little water, and is never irrigated. The cultivator in the Philippine Islands is always enabled to secure plenty of manure; for vegetation is so luxuriant that by pulling the weeds and laying them with earth a good stock is quickly obtained with which to cover his fields. Thus, although the growth is so rank as to cause him labour, yet in this hot climate its decay is equally rapid, which tends to make his labours more successful.