INJURIOUS EFFECTS OF RICE-CULTURE. 467 
Irrigation, as employed for certain special purposes in Europe 
and America, is productive of very prejudicial climatic effects. 
I refer particularly to the cultivation of rice in the Southern 
States of the American Union and in Italy. The climate of the 
Southern States is in general not necessarily unhealthy for the 
white man, but he can scarcely sleep a single night in the vi- 
cinity of the rice-grounds without being attacked by a dangerous 
fever. The neighborhood of the rice-fields is possibly less pes- 
tilential in Lombardy and Piedmont than in South Carolina and 
Georgia, but still very insalubrious to both man and beast. 
“ Not only does the population decrease where rice is grown,” 
says Escourrou-Milliago, “but even the flocks are attacked by 
typhus. In the rice-grounds the soil is divided into compart- 
ments rising in gradual succession to the level of the irrigating 
canal, in order that the water, after having flowed one field, 
may be drawn off to another, and thus a single current serve 
for several compartments, the lowest field, of course, still being 
higher than the ditch which at last drains both it and the adja- 
cent soil. This arrangement gives a certain force of hydrostatic 
pressure to the water with which the rice is irrigated, and the 
infiltration from these fields is said to extend through neigh- 
boring grounds, sometimes to the distance of not less than a 
myriametre, or six English miles, and to be destructive to crops 
and even trees reached by it. Land thus affected can no longer 
be employed for any purpose but growing rice, and when pre- 
pared for that crop, it propagates still further the evils under 
which it had itself suffered, and, of course, the mischief is a 
growing one.” * 
of water burst out. This was joined by others a little lower down, and, at the 
distance of a mile from the town, a strong current was formed and ran down 
towards Wadi el Araba. 
Similar facts are observed in all countries where the superficial current of 
water-courses is diverted from their bed for irrigation, but this case is of 
special interest because it shows the extent of absorption and infiltration even 
in the torrid climate of Arabia. See Barrp Smiru, Jtalian Irrigation, vol. 
i., pp. 172, 386 and 387. 
* EscourRRovu-MiLuiaGo, L’ Italie a propos de V Exposition de Paris, 1856, 
p. 92. According to an article in the Gazzetta ¢€ ‘Ucrino for the 17th of 
