24. low banks or dykes are used to drain water from one area to the other pits and trenches dug and numerous other devices are used to keep the soil sweet. The soil has been built up so as to keep the soil sweet. The soil has been built up so as to keep a water table just below the surface at a depth of 1 inch or so. When the taru is to do its growing under water the top is taken off and the under quaggy mud beaten up with sticks, natives work- ing in lines to do this, when well aireated surface water from elsewhere is run on to a depth of an inch or two and the taru planted, at a depth of about 12 to 18 inches under the surface of the water in the more or less liquid mud. Coconut leaves are then laid between rows and trodden in and allowed to rot. Later the water is slowly allowed to lower its level and during such time much vegetable matter, swamp grass or tussocks, leguminous shrubs (a type of mimosa) coconut leaves etc., are placed as a mulch and slowly rotted, thus forming fertilizer and building up the soil till it becomes more or less a dry area. After some years, all the crop is removed the plot returns to (a bog in wet weather but a more or less firm bog in dry weather on which one may walk without sinking) swamp grasses tussocks and small shrubs and mimosa. Regular rotation being practiced in regulation up and down the swamp according to the village divisions which passed certain areas. These swamps abound in all types of insect life molluses etc. and form ideal areas for Anas (which breed in them in numbers, as well as elsewhere mostly in the areas under fallow). Porphyrio (to a limited extent) three species of rail abound in the swamp. Such birds as Lichmera, Lalage, Halcyon, Zosterops, Aplonis (to a very limited extent), two species of Collocalia, Hirundo (feeding on winged insects) Gerygone (to a limited extent), Myiagra (occasionally and more in the coconut margins), Pachycephala