ORYZA, the name by which rice was known to the Greeks and Romans, and which has been adopted by botanists as the generic name of the plant yielding that valuable grain. [Orirza, in NAT. HIST. Div.] The rice plant is nndoubtedly a native of India, from which country it has spread over a great part of the world, especially in Asia, where it forma the principal portion of the food of the inhabitants, but it Las also from very early times been introduced into the southern parts of Europe. Theophrmtus describes it in book iv. c. 5, with other Indian plants, and mentions it as growing in water, and that its inflo rescence is like that of trillium or panicum, and not in form of a spike. Rice is now extensively cultivated in North and South Carolina, and in Georgia; also In Italy and the south of Spain, and likewise a little in Germany. The perfect system of irrigation and tillage which was introduced into Italy at so early a period no doubt rendered the cultivation easy, as the climate is also sufficiently hot and regular.
As the summer temperature of many countries is high, it is easy to cultivate an annual like rice where water is abundant and irrigation easy ; but as the summer temperature of most European countries is too low, and not long enough continued, and far from regular, it is hopeless to attempt the culture of a grain which requires so much heat, and which has the disadvantage, from the moisture arising from irrigation, of making a country unhealthy ; but this is not the case in the rainy season of tropical countries, where the rice-field is not much more moist than the rest of the country. Its culture has been attempted in England, and a small crop was raised near Windsor, on the banks of the Thames. It has been hoped that the mountain rice, which is known to grow at considerable elevations in the Hima layan Mountaina, might be suited to an English climate. This variety certainly requires a less degree of heat, but it seems to ho forgotten that temperature is only one of the elements of climate, and that moisture may be supplied to a plant either by the soil or the atmos phere, and the latter may be moist when the former is comparatively dry. Rice is sown in the Himalayas offirin places within the influence of the periodical rains, that is, from about the middle of June to the end of September. In some places It is irrigated, and in others it is not, but rain falls very frequently, and the air is almost always in a moist state, from being charged with moisture from the heated valleys, which is deposited on the mountains, when it reaches an elevation where it becomes cooled beyond the point of saturation. The tempe
rature also is so uniform as not to vary 10° of Fehr. from 70° for three months. So in the isle of France the mountain rice is cultivated only in the rainy season.
The rice so extensively cultivated throughout India (and the cultiva tion in China, as described by Sir G. Staunton, is very similar) depends upon rain or irrigation either from rivers or tanks. These Captain B. Hall (' Frog. of Voyages,' vol. iii. p. 88) describes in one situation, near Nundydroog, as spread over a valley, which was from six to eight miles across, and that they were used for irrigating myriads of rice-fields. The embankments are sometimes miles in length, and then of a waving snake-like shape. One valley was pointed out to Captain Hall, about a mile broad and forty miles long from end to end, which included between thirty and forty tanks, every intermediate square yard of the intermediate spaces being richly cultivated, while the surrounding country appeared to be condemned to perennial sterility.
Dr. Roxburgh atates that he never saw or heard of an Indian farmer manuring in the smallest degree a rice-field; yet these fields have pro bably for thousands of years continued to yield annually a large crop of rice, on an average from thirty to sixty fold ; even eighty or a hundred has been known. The best rice-fields are extensive open plains through which large rivers pass. The soil is generally of good depth ; the best are those annually overflowed by the inundations, from which they necessarily receive some fertilising matter ; but the greatest part of the rice lands depend on the rains only, and receive no help except from it and the air. The varieties of rice are innumerable; forty or fifty at least are described. They are divided by Dr. Rox burgh into two kinds : one, called in Telinga, Peones, Sans., Asoo, is sown thick in June or July, and transplanted in about forty days, when the plants are about nine to eighteen inches high ; the fields are then kept constantly wet ; more or leas flooded, as some sorts require very little water, while others require a great deal When the grain is ripe, the water is drained off, and the crop cut down with the sickle; it is either stacked or trod out by cattle. The grain is preserved in pits dug in high ground and lined with the rico straw.. The straw is stacked by the careful farmer for feeding his cattle during the hot weather.