When buckets are used, the system of irrigation is called "watering with the foot." The buckets are small, and are linked together about twelve inches apart. They revolve on a rude wooden windlass, which is worked by two men, who place their feet on treadles fastened to the shaft round which the buckets revolve, at the same time grasping a horizontal bar for support. They run from the canal or pool, up an inclined trough, fall over the shaft, and tilt their contents into the field, pass back again under the shaft, and so return to the canal again. [Illustration: A SIAMESE RICE-PLOUGH. _Page 199._] Of the forty different kinds of rice known to agriculturists, about six varieties are grown in Siam. The natives divide these roughly into two classes, which they name respectively "Garden rice," and "Field rice." The latter kind is inferior in quality, and is scattered broadcast in the fields, where it is left to grow without any further care or attention being bestowed upon its cultivation. "Garden rice," on the other hand, is carefully sown and tended. The seeds are first sown as thickly as they can grow, in well-watered patches. They soon sprout, and the beautiful green blades grow rapidly in the hot sunshine. When they are a few inches high, they are pulled up by the roots, and bound into small bundles. These bundles are taken to the fields by men, women, and children, to be there transplanted in long straight rows. The fields have by this time been covered with water, and trampled into a thick black mud under the hoofs of the buffaloes. Everyone, to use a native expression, now "dives into the field." They push the roots of the young shoots deep down into the soft mud, with their nimble hands and feet, with amazing rapidity. A good worker will not take more than three days to plant an acre. Planting lasts from about June to October, and during that time the farm hands receive in wages from eight to twelve shillings a month. The way in which the rice is reaped when the time for harvest has arrived, depends largely on the state of the fields. If the waters have subsided, it is reaped with the sickle, and bound into sheaves, which are first allowed to dry in the sun, and are then removed by buffalo carts or bullock waggons. But if the fields are still under water, this method is obviously impossible, and besides, there is always a sufficiently large number of leeches, land-crabs and water-snakes moving about in the slimy mud to make the labourer cautious as to where he treads. In this case the people go to the fields in their long narrow canoes. They cut off the ripe heads with a sickle, and drop them into small baskets placed in the bottom of the boat. Great carelessness is often shown by the laughing, gossiping reapers, who drop handful after handful of ripe grain into the water. [Illustration: PLANTING OUT YOUNG RICE--FOOT OF KORAT HILLS.]