Garden rice is carefully sown and tended. The seeds are first sown as thickly as they can grow, in well-watered patches. They soon sprout, and grow rapidly. When they are a few inches high they are pulled up and made into bundles of a hundred or so, neatly tied together. The mud is removed from the roots by a skilful kick which is given to the bundle as it is drawn from the soil. The bundles are taken to the fields by men, women, and children, and transplanted in long rows. The fields have been covered with water and trampled into a thick mud by the hoofs of the buffaloes. The young shoots are handed to the women and girls, and they push the roots down into the soft mud, working very cleverly and rapidly. A good worker can plant an acre in this way in about three days. The method of reaping the rice depends on the state of the fields. If the floods have gone, the rice is reaped with the sickle and bound into sheaves. The sheaves are dried in the sun and then taken away in buffalo-carts or in bullock-wagons. But if the fields are still under water, the people row out in boats and canoes, cut off the ripe heads with a sickle, and drop them into small baskets placed in the bottom of the boat. The reapers are very careless, and drop much of the ripe grain into the water. The rice is dried in bundles, placed on frames that have been erected in the fields. The birds are kept away by boys, who are armed with long whips. On the end of the lash they stick a pellet of mud. When they crack the whip the mud flies off, and so clever are they at this form of slinging that they rarely miss the bird at which they aim. When the water has all gone from the fields, the long stalks that have been left standing are burned. The threshing is done by buffaloes on a floor which is specially prepared by covering it with a paste made of soil, cow-dung, and water. After a few days the plaster sets into a hard, firm covering to the ground. A pole is fixed in the centre, and two buffaloes, yoked side by side, are made to walk round and round the pole, all the while treading the grain under their feet. The threshing takes place on moonlight nights, and is the occasion of much merriment. The children never dream of going to bed. They play in the heaps of straw, or dance round the big bonfires to the sound of fiddles, tom-toms, and drums. Their parents chat and joke the long night through, and in the shadows the red ends of their cigarettes gleam unceasingly, while the pale green fire-flies flit to and fro, and seem to wonder what it is all about. When the threshing is over, the farmer gives a feast to his neighbours to celebrate the event. His heaps of grain are spread evenly over the threshing floor, the straw is piled up in little stacks, and around all is twined the usual white thread to keep away the evil spirits.