hinese, they usually die of old age.

On one occasion I saw a large family of natives returning mournfully
to their village from a neighbouring meadow, and on making inquiries
was told that they had been to bury their water buffalo, which had
just died after a faithful service of more than twenty years.

When on a shooting trip far up the River Han I saw a large buffalo
with four boys on his back, grazing by the side of a water-ditch,
which lay between him and a steep bank some ten feet high. The grass
being very soft, my close approach was unobserved, until a hare
getting up I fired off my gun. Instantly the buffalo dashed through
the ditch and up the bank, when the boys, having nothing to hold on to
except one another, were shot off backwards into the water, where they
formed a perfect heap of struggling arms and legs, to my great
amusement.

Chinese farm-houses are very different from the substantial,
comfortable dwellings obtaining in this country, being primitive clay
hovels with no upper storeys, having tile roofs, windows of oiled
paper, and mud floors, while the furniture is home-made and of the
roughest description. No walks or gardens surround the house, which
stands in the centre of the farm-yard, outbuildings and cesspools,
with the threshing-floor, as a rule, immediately outside the front
door. Pigs, dogs, fowls and goats roam at will through the dwelling
and about the premises, while the two or three buffaloes and oxen used
for ploughing and threshing are tethered to neighbouring trees.

[Illustration: A TYPICAL FARM-HOUSE.
_To face page 177._]

Although wheat, maize, barley and millet are largely cultivated in the
north, rice is the principal crop wherever it can be grown, much water
being necessary. It is first sown in quite a small, dry patch, to be
subsequently transplanted, and comes up as thick as grass and of a
most brilliant green. The fields, which rarely exceed half an acre,
and are generally very much less, are now tilled. First, they are
flooded by a careful system of irrigation to a depth of three or four
inches, and when sufficiently soft turned over with a primitive,
wooden plough, shod with a small iron blade or tip, and drawn by one
water buffalo. After this they are harrowed, the farmer standing on
the harrow and driving the buffalo as it wades along, until they are
masses of rich, liquid mud. The young plants are now pricked out by
hand, about six inches apart, and the fields