Rice is always substituted by the physician, when practicable, as the food best adapted to the digestion, in diarrhcea and other similar diseases ; and if the clean rice be ground and bolted, a meal is produced which can be made up into various forms of cake and other bread forms of unrivalled sweetness and delicacy.
Rice possesses the advantage attending wheat, maize, and other grains, of preserving plenty during the fluctuations of trade, and is also susceptible of cultivation on land too low and moist for the production of most other useful plants.
Where inundation is practised, ordinarily the ground is squared off in beds, generally 30 to 40 yards in length and breadth, separated by small dykes 2 feet high and 1 foot broad. - This bed, after being thoroughly saturated with water, is ploughed up and manured with wood-ashes, or from dung-heaps, or green herbs or shrubs are ploughed in, the most favourite being the Calo tropis gigantea, which is eagerly sought after by the cultivator at the ploughing season. The ground thus prepared is flooded with water, 2 to 4 inches deep, thoroughly to dissolve the soil, and a few days afterwards it is again ploughed into a deep muddy mixture. A piece of wood, tied on to the yoke of a pair of bullocks, is drawn over the puddle to level it, after which it is ready to receive the seed, which is then sown broadcast. The following day, so soon as the seed has settled into the soil, the flood water is let off, and the soil allowed to dry for three or four days, during which the seedlings will have sprung up about 2 inches high, on which the field is irrigated, and the water allowed to stand a couple of inches above the soil, and is so maintained until the harvest.
With some varieties of rice the field is ploughed up after rain, and the seeds sown. When the sprouts are between four and six weeks old, the field is irrigated for the first time, and the water snpply maintained until the grain ripens and the stalks are ready for the sickle, which is seen by the whole field lying down. Nurseries are frequently prepared in the manner previously described, and the seed sown. Six or eight weeks afterwards, the plants are transplanted into fields prepared in the same way to receive there.
During the first and second months, the fields are band - weeded by women and boys any crowding or failure is remedied by transplanting, so as to leave 4 to 6 inches of space between each plant. If the plants shoot up in a lanky manner,
8 or 10 inches of the tops are cut off by the sickle, which makes them more fruitful. In the Tamil speaking countries, the varieties called Kado Kalu than, and Vellai, Sirumani, Pompalui, Esarakova, Pall, Thiruvarangam, and Nirvala Sumbah are sown in July or August, and cut in January or February, taking six mouths to ripen. Vaday Sumbah, August to December, five month; Vallai kar, August to November, four months.
American' rice is of two kinds,—:the red' and the white from the colour of the pellicle which encloses seed, on the removal of which both a.re alike white. The former was accidentally introduced in 1694 by a ship captain from Mada ,,oascar, and the latter was transrnitted in 1647 to America by Mr. Doubois, treasurer of those days to the E. I. Company.
The growth of rice in North America 'is almost wholly confined to two States, nine-tenths of the whole product, indeed, being raised in the States of Carolina and Georgia. A little is grown in North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Texas, Louis iana, and Mississippi.
The cultivation is carried on in South Carolina in the marshy flats, which are periodically covered by the floodings of the rivers, and for such culture that Stat,e possesses peculiar advantages, which not only enable the cultivator to produce his grain at a trifling cost of labour, but also of a much finer quality than in those lin:ids which are arti ficially irrigated. Carolina rice has a finer, handsomer grain than that which is grown in the country of its original production.
The yield per acre varies in South Carolina from 20 to 60 bushels, weighing from 45 to 48 lbs. when cleaned. Under favourable circumstances, as many as 90 bushels to an acre have been raised.
A variety of rice, discovered in South Carolina in 1838, was called the big-grained rice. It proved to be unusually productive. One farmer, in 1840, planted not quite half an acre with this seed, which yielded 49i bushels of clean winnowed rice. In 1842 he planted 400 acres, and in 1843 he sowed his whole crop with this seed. His first parcel when milled was 80 barrels, and netted half a dollar per cwt. over the primest rice sold on the same day. Another cultivator also planted two fields in 1839, which yielded 73 bushels per acre. The average crop before, from the same fields of 15 and 10 acres, had only been 33 bushels per acre.