and much labor he had made his half acre for cucumbers equivalent to more than two.  He had removed the vines entirely from the ground; had provided a travel space two feet wide, down which he was walking, and he had made it possible to work about the roots of every plant for the purpose of hoeing and feeding.  Four acres of cucumbers handled by American field methods would not yield more than this man’s one, and he grows besides two other crops the same season.

The difference is not so much in activity of muscle as it is in alertness and efficiency of the grey matter of the brain.  He sees and treats each plant individually, he loosens the ground so that his liquid manure drops immediately beneath the surface within reach of the active roots.  If the rainfall has been scanty and the soil is dry he may use ten of water to two of night soil, not to supply water but to make certain sufficiently deep penetration.  If the weather is rainy and the soil over wet, the food is applied more concentrated, not to lighten the burden but to avoid waste by leaching and over saturation.  While ever crowding growth he never overfeeds.  Forethought, after-thought and the mind focused on the work in hand are characteristic of these people.  We do not recall to have seen a man smoking while at work.  They enjoy smoking, but prefer to do this also with the attention undivided and thus get more for their money.

On another date earlier in May we were walking in the fields without an interpreter.  For half an hour we stood watching an old gardener fitting the soil with his spading hoe in the manner seen in Fig. 26, where the graves of his ancestors occupy a part of the land.  Angleworms were extremely numerous, as large around as an ordinary lead pencil and, when not extended, two-thirds as long, decidedly greenish in color.  Nearly every stroke of the spade exposed two to five of these worms but so far as we observed, and we watched the man closely, pulverizing the soil, he neither injured nor left uncovered a single worm.  While he seemed to make no effort to avoid injuring them or to cover them with earth, and while we could not talk with him, we are convinced that his action was continually guarded against injuring the worms.

They certainly were subsoiling his garden deeply and making possible a freer circulation of air far below the surface.  Their great abundance proved a high content of organic matter present in the soil and, as the worms ate their way through it, passing the soil through their bodies, the yearly volume of work done by them was very great.  In the fields flooded preparatory to fitting them for rice these worms are forced to the surface in enormous numbers and large flocks of ducks are taken to such fields to feed upon them.