he
soil of the sementera is turned for the new rice crop these pigsties
are cleaned out and the rich manure spread on the beds.

The manure is sometimes carried by women though generally by men,
and the carriers in a string pass all day between the sementeras and
the pueblo, each bearing his transportation basket on his shoulder
containing about 100 pounds of as good fertilizer as agricultural
man ever thought to employ.

The manure is gathered from the sties with the two hands and is dumped
in the sementera in 10-pound piles about 5 feet apart after the soil
has been turned and trod soft and even.

It is said that in some sections of Igorot land dry vegetable matter
is burned so that ash may be had for fertilizing purposes.

I have seen women working long, dry grass under the soil in camote
sementeras at the time the crop was being gathered (Pl. LXIV),
but I believe fertilizers are seldom employed, except where rice
is grown. Mountain-side sementeras are frequently abandoned after
a few years' service, as they are supposed to be exhausted, whereas
fertilization would restore them.

Seed planting

Pad-cho-kan' is the name of the sementera used as a rice seed bed. One
or more small groups of sementeras in every pueblo is so protected from
the cold rains and winds of November and December and is so exposed to
the warm sun that it answers well the purposes of a primitive hotbed;
consequently it becomes such, and anyone who asks permission of the
owner may plant his seed there (see Pl. LXV).

The seed is planted in the beds after they have been thoroughly
worked and softened, the soil usually being turned three times. The
planting in Bontoc occurs the first part of November. November 15,
1902, the rice had burst its kernel and was above water in the Bontoc
beds. The seed is not shelled before planting, but the full fruit
heads, sin-lu'-wi, are laid, without covering, on the soft ooze, under
3 or 4 inches of water. They are laid in rows a few inches apart,
and are so close together that by the time the young plants are 3
inches above the surface of the water the bed is a solid mass of green.

Bontoc pueblo has six varieties of rice. Neighboring pueblos have
others; and it is probable that fifty, perhaps a hundred, varieties are
grown by the different irrigating peoples of northern Luzon. In Bontoc,
ti'-pa is a white beardless variety. Ga'-sang is white, and cha-yet'-it
is claimed to be the same grain, except it i