Sawahs are plantations of padi in low wet ground, which, during the growth of the crop, in the rainy season between the months of October and March,* are for the most part overflowed to the depth of six inches or a foot, beyond which latter the water becomes prejudicial. Level marshes, of firm bottom, under a moderate stratum of mud, and not liable to deep stagnant water, are the situations preferred; the narrower hollows, though very commonly used for small plantations, being more liable to accidents from torrents and too great depth of water, which the inhabitants have rarely industry enough to regulate to advantage by permanent embankments. They are not however ignorant of such expedients, and works are sometimes met with, constructed for the purpose chiefly of supplying the deficiency of rain to several adjoining sawahs by means of sluices, contrived with no small degree of skill and attention to levels. (*Footnote. In the Transactions of the Batavian Society the following mention is made of the cultivation of rice in Java. The padi sawa is sown in low watered grounds in the month of March, transplanted in April, and reaped in August. The padi tipar is sown in high ploughed lands in November, and reaped in March (earlier in the season than I could have supposed.) when sown where woods have been recently cut down, or in the clefts of the hills (klooven van het gebergte) it is named padi gaga. Volume 1 page 27.) In new ground, after clearing it from the brushwood, reeds, and aquatic vegetables with which the marshes, when neglected, are overrun, and burning them at the close of the dry season, the soil is, in the beginning of the wet, prepared for culture by different modes of working. In some places a number of buffaloes, whose greatest enjoyment consists in wading and rolling in mud, are turned in, and these by their motions contribute to give it a more uniform consistence as well as enrich it by their dung. In other parts less permanently moist the soil is turned up, either with a wooden instrument between a hoe and a pickaxe, or with the plough, of which they use two kinds; their own, drawn by one buffalo, extremely simple, and the wooden share of it doing little more than scratch the ground to the depth of six inches; and one they have borrowed from the Chinese, drawn either with one or two buffaloes, very light, and the share more nearly resembling ours, turning the soil over as it passes and making a narrow furrow. In sawahs however the surface has in general so little consistence that no furrow is perceptible, and the plough does little more than loosen the stiff mud to some depth, and cut the roots of the grass and weeds, from which it is afterwards cleared by means of a kind of harrow or rake, being a thick plank of heavy wood with strong wooden teeth and loaded with earth where necessary. This they contrive to drag along the surface for the purpose at the same time of depressing the rising spots and filling up the hollow ones.