118 STATE BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



The farmers, as in some European countries, generally live in villages, 

 going out into the country to till their land. Probably this collection in 

 villages was chiefly for safety. A village usually consists of families 

 related to each other and governed in local matters by the elders, who 

 are literally the older men, the grandfathers. 



CAUSES OF FAMINE. 



The production of China is sufficient for the sustenance of the people, 

 but the suffering from famines in certain provinces is due to the fact that 

 the roads are so bad and so few that food can not be carried to the 

 sufferers from distant parts of the empire. Even in the capital itself the 

 streets are so bad that one of our spring carriages could not be used there. 

 Heavy, springless carts are used for carrying passengers in Pekin. 



The holdings of land are generally so small that the owners might often 

 more properly be called gardeners than farmers. Though the population 

 is so dense there are large tracts of land uncultivated, partly because the 

 people have not the skill or the capital to drain it, if it is swampy, or to 

 protect it, if it is subject to ravages by the rivers, and partly because of 

 plundering by corrupt officials. 



The crops in the north are wheat, millet and barley; in the middle and 

 south rice, tea, sugar cane, cotton and hemp. 



The tools are very simple and rude. The one most used is a heavy 

 grub hoe. The plow is of primitive form — the same which has been used 

 for 2.000 years. It scratches the ground about three inches in depth. 

 They have no implement comparable to our scythe or sickle. A heavy 

 knife, something like our old fashioned corn-cutter, is used to cut the 

 grain. 



HIGH STATE OF FERTILITY. 



They gather with great care everything which will serve as manure. 

 They apply the manure rather to the hill than to the field at large. So 

 large a part of the year is comparatively rainless that they take much 

 pains with irrigation, conducting streams to the fields or drawing water 

 from wells. Animals are not much used. Men are to a great extent the 

 burden bearers. Wheelbarrows, which will carry some hundreds of 

 pounds, are largely used. 



They commonly sow their grain in hills, separated widely enough to 

 permit the planting of another crop between them. Rice is sown first 

 in a small plot highly enriched by liquid manure, and the shoots are 

 transplanted to a wet field, ploughed by water buffalos. Cotton fields 

 are often made to bear a winter crop of wheat. Mulberry trees for feed- 

 ing silk worms are planted in rows twelve feet apart and trimmed back 

 early to multiply leaves. Tea is generally not raised in large plantations, 

 but small cultivators have a few bushes, from which they strip three 

 crops of leaves a jear. The Chinese have much skill in raising flowers 

 and in dwarfin'g trees, which they trim into fanciful shapes. They have 

 a variety of fruits, of which the pears and grapes are the best. Our 

 missionaries have introduced a few American apples. The Chinese 

 have some method of keeping grapes fresh and good as late as May. 

 They do not reveal the secret. It is supposed they hang them on sticks 

 in drv subterranean caves or cellars. 



