Having made enquiry about what is mentioned by Father Martini of sowing their fields at Van-cheu with oyster-shells, to make new ones grow, I was told, that after they have taken out the oysters, they sprinkle the empty shells with urine, and throw them into the water, by which means there grow new oysters on the old shells.[332] Martini says he could never find a Latin name for the Tula Mogorin of the Portuguese; but I am sure it is the same with the Syringa arabica, flore pleno albo, of Parkinson.  Martini also says that the kieu-yeu, or tallow-tree, bears a white flower, like that of the cherry-tree:  But all that I have seen here bear spikes of small yellow flowers, like the julus of the Salix.  The bean-broth, or mandarin-broth, so frequently mentioned in the Dutch embassy, and by other authors, is only an emulsion made of the seeds of sesamum with hot water.

[Footnote 332:  This strange story may possibly be thus explained.  At certain seasons, numerous minute oysters may be seen sticking to the shells of the old ones; and the Chinese may have thrown the emptied shells into the sea, in the highly probable expectation of these minute oysters continuing to live and grow.  The circumstances in the text are absurd additions, either from ignorance or imposition.—­E.]

The chief employments of the people here are fishing and agriculture.  In fishing, they use several sorts of nets and lines as we do; but, as there are great banks of mud in some places, the fishermen have contrived a small frame, three or four feet long, not much larger than a hen-trough, and a little elevated at each end, to enable them to go more easily on these mud banks.  Resting with one knee on the middle of one of these frames, and leaning his arms on a cross stick raised breast high, he uses the other foot on the mud to push the frame and himself forwards.

In their agricultural operations, all their fields on which any thing is to be cultivated, whether high or low, are formed into such plots or beds as may admit of retaining water over them when the cultivator thinks proper.  The lands are tilled by ploughs drawn by one cow or buffalo; and when it is intended to sow rice, the soil is remarkably well prepared and cleared from all weeds, after which it is moistened into the state of a pulp, and smoothed by a frame drawn across, when the rice is sown very thick, and covered over with water, only to the height of two or three inches.  When the seedling plants are six or eight inches long, they are all pulled up, and transplanted in straight lines into other fields, which are overflowed with water; and, when weeds grow up, they destroy them by covering them up in the interstices between the rows of rice, turning the mud over them with their hands.  When they are to sow wheat, barley, pulse, or other grain, they grub up the surface of the ground superficially, earth, grass, and rook, and mixing this