CANADA RICE (zizania aquatica), the WILD Rim of North America, is a species of grass quite different from the true rice, and of a different genus. It is common in North America, and particularly abundant in the north-western parts of it; growing in miry places or shallow water, often in the margins of lakes. It has a culm 7 to 8 ft. high, with broad diffuse leaves, and a large terminal panicle of male flowers, with a spike of female flowers at the summit.. The flowers have six stamens. The seeds are about half an inch long, slender, farinaceous, affording very good meal, and much used by 11w Indians where the plant abounds. Attempts to introduce this plant into Britain have hitherto proved unsuccessful; but, there are many northern regions apparently more suitable to it, and it has not received all the attention it deserves.
RICE (ante). The origin of the growth of rice in America is referred to the latter part of the 17th c., when a vessel from Madagascar is said to have brought a sack of the grain to Charleston, S. C., which was planted there and yielded largely. The culture spread, and eventually it became the staple product of that state, and was nowhere else grown so extensively until after the war of the rebellion. The mode of culture best adapted to the plant in South Carolina has been found to be by irrigation, and it is chiefly grown where the land is overflowed by the tides. The cultivation of rice spread rapidly from the beginning into most of the southern states, and even so far north as :Missouri, Tennessee, and Illinois. But of late years Louisiana has been the most suc cessful of any state in its cultivation. There it is grown on lowlands subject to over
flow from the river, with due precautions against a possible crevasse. The water is con veyed by ditches and laterals, and is alternately turned on and drained off, as the condi tion of the plant and its progress may demand. When mature the water is finally drained off, and the grain is cut and left to dry. After thrashing. it is winnowed and placed in sacks, ready for the mill or market. The "upland" rice is dry-cultivated, and is claimed by some planters to be better than the lowland. It is grown upon high and dry land, and, after the manner of other grain, the yield is not so generous as with the lowland. The increase of rice cultivation in Louisiana was due to tire blockade of the s. Atlantic ports during the war. In 1863-64 it amounted to only 21,461 sacks; in 1869 70 it.had increased to 100,748 barrels. After this there was a falling off, and it did not reach the same figure until 1875, when it was 104,963 barrels, equivalent to about 21,000,000 pounds. In 1849 the total rice product of the United States was 215,313,497 pounds; in 1859, 187,167,032; in 1869, 73,635,001. In North Carolina rice culture is practically restricted to a small area of tide-waterlands on the cape Fear river. George town district, in South Carolina. is the most northerly portion of the tide-land rice dis tricts of the south, and supplies most of the seed to the other portions of our southern rice-field. The imports and exports of rice for the ten fiscal years ending 1877 were as follows :