RICE CULTIVATION.

01

it is evident that rice fields so constructed must form a
series of terraces. In the lower slopes of the mountains, e.g.,
in the Kandy District, these terraces afford a most striking
picture, being carried up steep, even precipitous slopes for
many hundreds of feet above the bottoms of the valleys.
In the wet zone, and also in irrigated parts of the dry, there
are two crops each year, the larger or maha crop in the

TERRACED PADDY FIELD.

north-east, the smaller oryalacropin thesouth-west monsoon.
In the drier weather of the end of the monsoon the crop is.
harvested, and the fields, now dry, form grassy pastures on
which the cattle graze, while here and there are circular
threshing floors, on which the grain is beaten out of the straw
by the treading of buffaloes or oxen, in the world-old
Asiatic way, and winnowed by being thrown into the air
‘rom flat hasketwork trays. With the advent of the rains.