RICE. The important rice plant is a native of India, whence it has been introduced into various parts of the world. It is exten sively cultivated in India, in the south of Europe, and in the southern United States ; and less largely in many other countries. It requires so much heat combined with moisture that it cannot be profitably cultivated in northern climates. The cultivation in India and China depends either upon the rainy seasons, or upon irrigation ; the tanks for irri gation are in some cases quite enormous, being bounded by embankments many miles in length. The best rice-fields are never manured, and yet they yield 30 to 100 fold. They are usually exensive open plains through which large rivers pass. They more frequently depend on rain for irrigation than on tanks. There are many kinds of rice, which require different modes of cultivation. One of the principal kinds is sown in June or July, and transplanted in about forty days, when the ' plants are from 0 to 18 inches high. The fields are then kept constantly wet. When Ise grain is ripe the water is drained off, and the crop is cut down with the sickle ; it is either stacked or trodden out by cattle. The grain is preserved in pits dug in high ground and rice lined with the ce straw. There are usually two crops in a year ; but as the produce is very uncertain, the growers look chiefly to the first.
Of the kinds of rice imported into England, the Carolina is the best ; the grains are shorter, broader, and boil softer than the Patna rice, which is the best Indian kind brought to this country.
Rice is no doubt the grain which yields food for the largest portion of the human race, but even in Hindustan great numbers do not eat rice. In fact in all the north-western provinces wheat is the principal crop, and the natives eat wheaten cakes. It abounds however in nourish ment, being composed almost entirely of fecula, that is, 96 per cent., and therefore cannot he baked into bread ; but it is more easily cooked. It is light and wholesome, and easily digested, and might form a much larger portion of the diet in Europe than it does. Europeans in India eat it at breakfast as well as at other meals, and with fish as frequently as with their curries.
About 976,196 cwts. of rice were imported in 1849, and 785,692 cwts. in 1850. rice RICE-MILL. When ce has been culti-
vated and gathered, some sort of mechanism is requisite for the removal of the husk. The Chinese and Hindoos beat the grain in a kind of rude mortar of stone or earthenware, with a conical stone attached to a lever worked by the hand or foot. Sometimes several such levers are moved by arms projecting from the axis of a water-wheel. This process being uncertain and tedious, the preference has been given of late to a mill in which the stones aro placed at such a distance asunder as to detach the shell without crushing the grain ; the stones being inclosed in a case which prevents the dispersion of the rice by the rapid rotation of the machine. The rice is thrown out of the case by an opening in its side, and con- ducted over a sieve that separates the dust; after which it is made to fall in a gentle stream exposed to a current of air produced by revol- ving fanners, and is thereby separated from the husk. After the removal of the husk, the grain is exposed to the action of a whitening machine, which removes the inner cuticle, or red skin, remaining on the surface of the grain. • One of the English methods consists in breaking the husk by mill-stones, and removing the red cuticle by beating or titurating in mortars ; the latter operation being aided by mixing a quantity of the husks, well dried, with the grain, which obviates an inconvenience occasioned by the glutinous character of the red coating. The refuse matter and the broken grains are then separated by a peculiar kind of screen, and the rice is finally cleansed and polished by rotating in a machine. In another method, the first operation is per formed between one millstone and a piece of wood of precisely similar shape, and the sub sequent removal of the dark pellicle is effected by rubbing between flat wooden surfaces covered with sheepskin. In a third method, the rice is allowed to enter the upper end of an inclined cylinder by a hopper, and the mutual attrition of the grains, as they pass between bars which are revolving in the oppo site direction, causes the separation of the husks, which are removed by a current of air as the grain falls into a bin under the lower extremity of the cylinder.