their necks.
The ordinary procedure in making a paddy is to remove the top soil,
beat down the subsoil beneath, and then restore the top soil--there
may be from 5 to 10 in. of it. But the best efforts of the
paddy-field builder may be brought to naught by springs or by a
gravelly bottom. Then the farmer must make the best terms he can with
fortune.

Paddies, as may be imagined from their physical limitations, are of
every conceivable shape. There is assuredly no way of altering the
shape of the paddies which are dexterously fitted into the hillsides.
But large numbers of paddies are on fairly level ground.[67] There is
no real need for these being of all sizes and patterns. They are what
they are because of the degree to which their construction was
conditioned by water-supply problems, the financial resources of those
who dug them or the position of neighbours' land. And no doubt in the
course of centuries there has been a great deal of swapping, buying
and inheriting. So the average farmer's paddies are not only of all
shapes and sizes but here, there and everywhere.

Therefore there arose wise men to point out that for a farmer to work
a number of oddly shaped bits of land scattered all about the village
was uneconomical and out of date. (Like the old English strip system
which still survives in the Isle of Axholme.) So what was called an
adjustment of paddy fields was carried out in many places. The farmers
were persuaded to throw their varied assortment of fields into
hotchpot and then to have the mass cut up into oblong fields of equal
or relative sizes. These were then shared out according to what each
man had contributed. In some cases a little compensation had to be
given, for there were differences in the qualities as well as the
areas of the holdings. But reasonable justice was eventually done all
round, and ever afterwards a farmer, now that his holding was in
adjoining tracts, might spend his time working in his paddies instead
of in walking to and from them. Because many unnecessary paths and
divisions between paddies were done away with there was brought about
a saving of labour and increased efficiency of cultivation. There was
also a little more land to cultivate and the paddies were big enough
for an ox or a pony to be employed in them, and the water supply was
better and sufficiently under control for floods to be averted.[68] In
brief, costs were lower and crops were better.[69]

Thus all over J