The aspect of the lowland rice-fields of India and its isles is very different at various seasons of the year. Where, in Java, for instance, you see to-day long-legged herons gravely stalking over the inundated plain partitioned by small dykes, or a yoke of indolent buffaloes slowly wading through the mud, you will three or four months later be charmed by the view of a gracefully undulating corn-field, bearing a great resemblance to our indigenous barley. Cords, to which scare-crows are attached traverse the field in every direction, and converge, to a small watch-house, erected on high poles. Here the attentive villager sits, like a spider in the centre of its web, and by pulling the cords, puts them from time to time into motion, whenever the wind is unwilling to undertake the office. Then the grotesque and noisy figures begin to rustle and to caper, and whole flocks of the neat little rice-bird or Java sparrow (_Loxia oryzivora_), rise on the wing, and hurry off with all the haste of guilty fright. After another month has elapsed, and the waters have long since evaporated or been withdrawn, the harvest takes place, and the rice-fields are enlivened by a motley crowd, for all the villagers, old and young, are busy reaping the golden ears. [Illustration: JAVA SPARROW.] The rice-fields offer a peculiarly charming picture when, as in the mountain valleys of Ceylon, they rise in terraces along the slopes. ‘Selecting an angular recess where two hills converge, the Kandyans construct a series of terraces, raised stage above stage, and retiring as they ascend along the slope of the acclivity, up which they are carried as high as the soil extends. Each terrace is furnished with a low ledge in front, behind which the requisite depth of water is retained during the germination of the seed, and what is superfluous is permitted to trickle down to the one below it. In order to carry on this peculiar cultivation the streams are led along the level of the hills, often from a distance of many miles, with a skill and perseverance for which the natives of these mountains have attained a great renown.’