50 A NATURALIST IN WESTERN CHINA 



potatoes, it is safe to say that not a single Chinese vegetable 

 would command attention in this country. In this chapter 

 I have attempted a fairly exhaustive account of this subject, in 

 so far as it came under my observation during the eleven years 

 I travelled in China. These observations were mainly limited 

 to three provinces, namely, Yunnan, Hupeh, and Szechuan. 

 The estimated area of these territories is about 372,500 

 square miles — more than three times that of the United 

 Kingdom. Other parts of China have vegetables peculiarly 

 their own. Again, at the treaty ports, where foreigners have 

 settled, varieties of our own vegetables have been introduced 

 and are cultivated for their use. These, with rare exceptions, 

 do not come within our province. 



In China the fields are all so small that market-gardening 

 rather than farming best describes the agricultural industry. 

 Long experience has taught the people how to obtain the 

 maximum returns without unduly exhausting the soil, indeed, 

 the extraordinary thing about Chinese agriculture is the fact 

 that, although cultivation has been so long in progress, the soil 

 shows practically no sign of exhaustion. Artificial manures are 

 unknown to the Chinese farmer, and ordinary farmyard manure 

 is scarce and almost a negligible factor. Constant tillage, aided 

 by as much sewage as can be possibly obtained, are relied upon 

 to produce full crops. The sewage from cities and villages is 

 carried long distances away in buckets or in tubs to the fields, 

 and nowhere else in the world is human excrement so highly 

 valued or so laboriously collected. In matters of seed-selection, 

 plant-breeding, and the higher arts of agriculture, the Chinese 

 have everything to learn. Rotation of crops and the enrich- 

 ment of the soil by leguminous crops they understand and 

 practise as fully as circumstances permit. 



Rice {Oryza sativa) is, of course, the favourite cereal, but being 

 a tropical plant, requiring an aquatic habitat, its area of cul- 

 tivation is restricted in China, and probably a third of the 

 people never taste this grain save on festival occasions. In 

 southern China two crops of rice are obtainable annually, but 

 throughout the greater part of the land where this cereal is 

 cultivated only one crop can be grown in a season. This 

 occupies the ground from May until early in September. 



