The rate at which the planters, working in a row across the paddy, set out the seedlings in the mud below the water, is remarkable.[77] The first weeding or raking takes place about a fortnight after planting. After that there are three more weedings, the last being about the end of August. All kinds of hoes are used in the sludge. They are usually provided with a wooden or tin float. But most of the weeding is done simply by thrusting the hand into the mud, pulling out the weed and thrusting it back into the sludge to rot. The back-breaking character of this work may be imagined. As much of it is done in the hottest time of the year the workers protect themselves by wide-brimmed hats of the willow-plate pattern and by flapping straw cloaks or by bundles of straw fastened on their backs. A sharp look-out must be kept for insects of various sorts. In more than one place I saw the boys and girls of elementary schools wading in the paddies and stroking the young rice with switches in order to make noxious insects rise. The creatures were captured by the young enthusiasts with nets. The children were given special times off from school work in which to hunt the rice pests and were encouraged to bring specimens to school. There is no greater delight to the eye than the paddies in their early green, rippled and gently laid over by the wind. (One should say greens, for there is every tint from the rather woe-begone yellowish green of the newly planted out rice to the happy luxuriant dark green of the paddies that have long been enjoying the best of quarters.) As harvest time approaches,[78] the paddies, because they are not all planted with the same variety of rice, are in patches of different shades. Some are straw colour, some are reddish brown or almost black. A poet speaks of the "hanging ears of rice." Rice always seems to hang its head more than other crops. It is weaker in the straw than barley, but rice frequently droops not only because of its natural habit, but because it has been over-manured or wrongly manured or because of wind or wet. Beyond wind,[79] insects and drought, floods are the enemies of rice. When the plants are young, three or four days' flooding do not matter much, but in August, when the ears are shooting, it is a different matter. The sun pours down and soon rots the rice lying in the warm water. Sometimes the farmer, by almost withdrawing the water from his paddies, raises the temperature of the soil with benefit to the crop.