RICE is the seed or grain of one of the grasses and quite com mon in the warm countries. It was first introduced into this country in 1694, from Madagascar, by the captain of a vessel, who presented a bag of paddy (which see) to one of the merchants of Charleston, and from this seed originated a crop which now amounts to many millions of dollars annually. Rice is not only the most useful, but also the most extensively cultivated of grains, as it supplies the principal food of one-third of the entire popula tion of the world.
Patna rice, of small, pearl-white grains, is the most esteemed of Eastern products, but the Carolina rice is universally regarded as the finest in size and quality. That coming from the East is usually shipped in its hulls, while that from the Southern States is always decorticated or cleaned. It grows best on lands that can be flooded, and on the islands of the coast the fields are usually dyked in and regularly flooded at high tide, so that the water is retained on them after the ebb. Two crops can be secured in one
year, and the total product of rice is estimated at six times that of wheat. Its use in the more northern countries in place of pota toes, which are generally more expensive and always more uncer tain in quality, is much restricted by the general ignorance of how to cook it. Grocers in the Northern States who handle rice mainly as a luxury, and sell a few pounds to go in soups and pud dings, have no idea of its wide sale in the South, where moderate stores will have four tierces of it open at once, close to the door way and labeled with price cards, each tierce being a different grade, as, fancy, whole, middling, and small. The grades depend ing almost entirely on the damage done to the grain in hulling it, there is no limit to the grades which can be reckoned from fancy head rice down to the finely-powdered article.