Then comes the winnowing process. The grain is lifted high and poured out of shovel-like baskets. The heavy grain drops to the ground. The light chaff drifts away a little distance as it falls.
It is easy to find rice imported from Japan in any large city market. It comes in bags woven of rice straw, that resembles tea matting.
Rice is deficient in oils and proteid matter, but rich in starch. It needs eggs or meat to make a balanced diet for us. That is because we are not vegetarians, as the average oriental is. He thrives on rice, with beans to supply the elements we get from meat. But he eats the whole rice, and so gets the richest part of the grain, which American rice mills sacrifice in order to get a white, polished grain.
In the American mills, rice is first received as paddy from the threshing. It is cleaned of weed seed, then hulled, then winnowed, then ground to remove the bran, and rubbed between sheep skin buffers to polish the grain. Now the sift ing process takes out the broken grains and the starchy dust, and the grain is graded for market.
Our rice is white, but tasteless when cooked. "Brown rice" is rich in flavor, and has a creamy color. Those who taste rice in Japan, or cooked in the Japanese way here, do not wonder that the little brown men were able to defeat men and arm ies much larger than their own, and to keep well and strong on a diet of rice.
Some American grocers carry a limited quan tity of "brown rice," the paddy with hulls re moved.
Fermented rice is the basis of the national beverage, called sake, which the Japanese drink hot out of tiny porcelain cups at the beginning of a meal. At weddings a good deal of sake is
drunk, and as it contains a high percentage of alcohol, the people may become intoxicated. The Chinese and the natives of different East Indian islands have their own beverages made of fermented rice.
Europe imports great quantities of rice for food, and for the manufacture of starch. Calicoes are stiffened with a paste of rice powder. Broken rice, the dust from rice mills, and the straw and hulls all make good food for cattle. The straw is used in making bags, hats, shoes, and other wearing apparel. Plowed under, the stubble en riches the soil.
Not only is rice the greatest grain crop of the world; it is one of the most beautiful of cereals as it grows on hillsides in Japan. The brooks that flow down the mountainsides are tapped by side channels that lead the water onto wonderful flat terraces, all planted to rice. Step by step the water trickles down, each little patch watered, and giving the water again to the level next below it. Constantly the supply is renewed from above. The trees form lovely frames for the pictures as the grain turns from green to gold, and the widen ing brook finally pours its waters into the marsh that is a broad, level sea of rice, ready for the sickle. In September the golden ricelands are as beautiful as the orchards and gardens that burst into bloom in cherry blossom time, the month of May.