828 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



able grain. The Chinese have much improved it by selection, 

 which practice was in early years enforced by an imperial edict 

 requiring the planting of only the largest grains. The most valu- 

 able variety grown in this country was secured by a South Caro- 

 lina planter, who, upon observing some notably long grains upon 

 a head, secured them, and so obtained the kind called the long 

 grain. In the island of Ceylon there are one hundred and sixty- 

 one varieties. 



Various accounts are given of the introduction of rice into this 

 country : one, that it was brought from the island of Madagascar 

 toward the close of the seventeenth century, and planted in a gar- 

 den in what is now one of the most thickly settled parts of the 

 city of Charleston ; and from this came the seed " that has made 

 South Carolina the great rice-growing State." Another account 

 claims that it was first grown in Virginia by Governor Berkeley, 

 of unenviable fame, as early as 1647. 



There are three varieties in the rice-growing States : 1. " White 

 rice, valued for its earliness and for growing upon uplands, the 

 husk cream-colored, and an ounce containing nine hundred and 

 sixty grains. 2. The gold-seeded, with a deep-yellow husk, and 

 large, fine white grain, eight hundred and ninety-six grains to the 

 ounce. 3. The long grain, a sub-variety of the gold seed, having 

 eight hundred and forty grains to the ounce ; the grains are longer 

 than any other, ^nd it is the most valued for cultivation : for home 

 use a long-awned variety, called the white seed, is often sown." 



It is of the rice-fields of the tide-lands of the Georgia and Caro- 

 lina coast, and of the adjacent islands, that we would speak. To 

 those who have never been among them, these rice plantations 

 would afford much that is both novel and interesting. This ever- 

 green region, where the plaintive notes of the whippoorwill and 

 song of the sweet-throated mocking-bird float up through the 

 moss-covered trees ; and negroes, fever and ague, rice-birds and 

 alligators abound, would indeed seem to be a new world to our 

 Northern brethren, and the picturesque effects charm the eye of 

 the stranger artist. The rice-field darkey is himself a distinct 

 type, totally different in both aspect and dialect from the negroes 

 of the interior ; and a not uninteresting sight is the force, as with 

 song and shout they take their way along the embankment to the 

 rice-field. Their ancestors for generations back, or, as they would 

 tell you, " mi f arrar an' mi granf arrar," have lived and labored in 

 these malarial regions, and they accept chill and fever and other 

 infelicities incident to these localities as unavoidable evils, plod- 

 ding on with no higher aim nor hope, careless for the future, and 

 not over-anxious for the present. The cost of living is small, as 

 not many nor very warm garments are considered necessary, and 

 the rice-field darkey's ideas of a wardrobe are extremely limited, 



