ing the soil and aeration than for killing weeds. After this treatment the field was gone over again in the manner seen in Fig. 166, where the man is using his bare hands to smooth and level the stirred soil, taking care to eradicate every weed, burying them beneath the mud, and to straighten each hill of rice as it is passed. Sometimes the fingers are armed with bamboo claws to facilitate the weeding. Machinery in the form of revolving hand cultivators is recently coming into use in Japan, and two men using these are seen in Fig. 14. In these cultivators the teeth are mounted on an axle so as to revolve as the cultivator is pushed along the row.
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Fig. 164.—A group of Japanese women transplanting rice, in rainy weather costume, at Fukuoka Experiment Station, Japan.
Fertilization for the rice crop receives the greatest attention
everywhere by these three nations and in no direction
more than in maintaining the store of organic matter in
the soil. The pink clover, to which reference has been
made, Figs. 99 and 100, is extensively sowed after a crop
of rice is harvested in the fall and comes into full bloom,
ready to cut for compost or to turn under directly when
the rice fields are plowed. Eighteen to twenty tons of
this green clover are produced per acre, and in Japan
this is usually applied to about three acres, the stubble
