Rice in Carolina is sown as soon as it con veniently can be after the vernal equinox, from which period until the middle, and even the last of May, is the usual time of putting it in the ground. It grows best in low marshy land, and should be sown in furrows 12 inches asunder •, it requires to be flooded, and thrives best if 6 inches under water ; is occasionally drained off, and turned on again to overflow it, for three or four times. When ripe the straw becomes yellow, and it is either reaped with a sickle or cut down with a scythe and cradle, some time in the month of September, after which it is raked and bound, or got up loose, and threshed or trodden out, and winnowed in the same manner as wheat or barley.
In the south of India, and along the sea-coasts, rice is the favourite food, but from the expenses attending the necessary irrigation, it is dearer than other cereals, and the labouring people live on dry grains, millets, and pulses. But these again take more time to prepare, more firewood to cook, and so strongly are the people of Southern India impressed by the superiority of-rice as food, that it indicates their well-to-do or impoverished condition by their telling that they can have rice twice or only once daily, or once weekly. Never theless, for the labouring man, the value of Ai dry grains, wheats, pulses, and millets, is far above rice as food.
Rice should be six tnonths old before being used, new rico causing diarrhcea in many people. It is simply husked, or is half-boiled and (fried in the sun. The former by the English in India is called table rice, and it is whiter than the boiled rice.
In Kashmir rico is the staple of cultivation. It is sown in the beginning of May, and is fit to cut about the end of August. The grain is either sown broadcast in the place where it is intended to 'stand till it is ripe, or thickly in beds, from which it is transplanted when the blade is about a foot high. About the 2Ist of March the land is opened by one or more ploughing,s, according to its strength, and the clods are broken down by blows with wooden mattocks, managed in general by women with great regularity and address ; after which water is let in upon the soil, which, for the most part of a. reddish day, is converted into a smooth soft mud. The seed grain, put into a sack of woven grass, is submerged in a running stream until it begin to sprout, which ordinarily takes place in three or four days. This precaution is adopted for the purpose of getting the young shoots as quickly as possible out of the way of a destructive small snail, which abounds in some of the watered lands of Kashmir. 1Yhen the farmer suspects, by the scanty appearance of the plants above the water in which the grain has been sown, and by the presence of the snail drawn up in the mud, that his hopes of a crop are likely to be dis appointed, he repeats the sowing, throwing into the water Borne fresh leaves of the Prangos plant, which either poison the snails or cause them to descend out of the reach of its influence. The seed is for the most part thrown broadcast into about 4 or 5 inches of water, which depth is endeavoured to be maintained. Differences of practice exist as to watering, but it seems gener ally agreed that rice can scarcely have too much, provided it be not submerged, except for a few days before it ripens, when a. dried state is supposed to hasten and to perfect the maturity, whilst it improves the quality of the grain. In Kashmir it is customary to manure the rice lands with rice straw rejected by the cattle, and mixed with cow dung. It is conveyed from the homestead to the fields by women in small wicker baskets, and is set on the land liberally. Many of the rice lands are high, but yield good crops, through the facility with which water is brought upon them from the streams which fall down the face of the neighbour ing hills. In common sea,sons the return of grain is from thirty to forty for one, on an average, besides the straw.
In the Panjab rice is grown in many of the plain districts, especially along the banks of the rivers. The rice of the Kangra valley and that of Peshawur are celebrated. And the varieties of it are very numerous, the best being the odorous kind called bas-mati or bas-marti. It is abund antly grown up to 6000 and 7000 feet in the Siwalik tract and up the valleys. In Kullu and Lahoul a kind of beer is stated to be prepared from rice, and on the Sutlej it is mixed with the Hordeum hexastichon barley for making beer.
In Lower Sind the bhull rico is grown. Like all large rivers which flow through an alluvial soil for a very lengthened course, the Indus him a tendency to throw up patches of alluvial deposit at its mouth ; theau are in Sind called bhull, and aro in general very valuable for the cultivation of the rod rico of tho country. The bhull are large tracts of very muddy, swampy land, almost on a level with the sea, and exposed equally to be flooded both by it and the fresh water ; indeed, on this depends much of the value of the soil, PA a bhull which is not at certain thnes well covered with salt water, is unfit for cultivation. They
exist on both sides of.the principal mouths of the Indus, in the Gorabaree and Shahbander par ganas, which part of the province is called by the natives Kukralla, and was in olden days, before the era of Gulam Shah, Kalom, a small state almost independent of the emirs of Sind. On the left bank of the mouths of the river these bhulls are very numerous, and form by far the most fertile portion of the surrounding district. They bear a most dreary, desolate, and awampy appearance, are intersected in all directions by streams of salt and brackish water, and are gener ally surrounded by low dykes or embankments, in order to regulate the influx and reflux of the river and sea. Yet from these dreary swamps a very considerable portion of the rice consumed in Sind is produced; and the cultivators who hold them are esteemed amongst 'the most respectable and wealthy in Lower Sind. To visit a bhull the only way is to go by boat, the mud being gener ally two or three feet deep, and it is only hero and there that a footing can be secured on the embankment surrounding the field. Should the river during the high season have thrown up a bhull, the cultivator selecting it for cultivation first surrounds it with a low wall of mud about three feet in height. These bhulls being formed during the inundation, are often considerably removed from the river branches during the low season. When the river has receded to its cold weather level, and the bhull is free of fresh water, advantage is taken of the first high spring tide, to open the bund,and allow the whole to be covered with salt water. This is generally done in Decem ber. The sea water remains on the land for about nine weeks, or till the middle of February, which is the proper time for sowing the seed. The salt water is now let out, and as the ground cannot, on account of the mud, be ploughed, buffaloes are driven over every part of the field, and a few seeds of the rice thrown into every footmark ; the men employed in sowing being obliged to crawl along the surface on their bellies, with the basket of seed on their backs ; for were they to assume an upright position, they would inevitably be bogged in the deep swamp. The holes containing the seed are not covered up, but people are placed on the bunds to drive away birds, until the young grain has well sprung up. The land is not manured, the stagnant salt water remaining on it being sufficient to renovate the soil. The rice seed is steeped in water and then in dung and earth for three or four days, and is not WWII Until it begins to sprout. The farmer has now safely got over his sowing, and as this rice is not, a.s with other varieties, transplanted, his next anxiety is to get a supply of fresh water ; and for this he watches , for the freahes which usually come down the river about the middle and end of February, and if the river then reach his bhull, he opens his bund, and fills the enclosure with the fresh water. The sooner he gets this supply the better, for the young rice will not grow in salt water, and soon withers if left entirely dry. The welfare of the crop now depends entirely on the supply of fresh water. A very high inundation does not injure the bhull cultivation, as here the water has free space to spread about. In fact, the more fresh water the better. If, however, the river remain low in June, July, and August, and the south-west monsoon sets in heavily on the coast, the sea is frequently driven over the bhulls and destroys the crops. It is, in fact, a continual struggle between the salt water and the fresh. When the river runs out strong and full, the bhulls prosper, and the sea is kept at a distance. On the other hand, the salt water obtains the supremacy when the river is low, and then the farmer suffers. Much bhull crop is destroyed in the monsoons and during the heavy gales. The rice is subject to attacks, also, of a small black sea crab, called by nativeS Kookaee, and which, with out any apparent object, cuts down the growing grain in large quantities, and often occasions much loss. If all goes well, the crop ripens well about the third week in September, and is reaped in the water by men, either in boats or on large masses of straw rudely shaped like a boat, and which, being made very tight a.nd close, will float for a considerable time. The rice is carried ashore to the high land, where it is dried, and put through the usual harvest process of division, etc. ; and the bhull is then, on the fall of the river, again ready for its annual inundation by sea water.