GRAIN AND ITS CULTIVATION. 157 



pine-forest ; not a tree being cut or belted, and no grubbing 

 being necessary, as there is little or no undergrowth. The 

 plow makes a shallow furrow about an inch or two deep, the 

 furrows about three feet apart. The rice is dropped into 

 them and covered with a harrow. The middles, or spaces be- 

 tween the furrows, are not broken up until the rice attains 

 several inches in height. One or two plowings suffice in the 

 Piney woods for its cultivation weeds and grass, owing to 

 the nature of the soil, not being troublesome. A similar 

 method of cultivation obtains on the prairie land of the north- 

 western States. Rice, like hemp, does not impoverish the 

 soil.* 1 On the contrary, it is a good preparatory crop for 

 some others, as Indian corn. The pine barrens of Missis- 

 sipi would produce rice ad infinitum, if it were not that the 

 land, after a few years, owing to the sandy nature of the 

 soil, becomes too dry for it. 



It has been ascertained by Arnal, that twelve pounds of 

 wheat flour and two pounds of rice will make twenty-four 

 pounds of an excellent bread, very white and good ; whereas, 

 without the addition of rice, 14 pounds of flour will only 

 make 18 pounds of bread. Like other kinds of grain, rice 

 adapts itself to the soil and climate, and particular mode of 

 cultivation ; but if the seed be not changed, or selected from 

 the best specimens of the plant, it will ultimately degene- 

 rate. Thus in Piedmont, after a long series of years, the 

 rice became so much affected with a kind of blight called the 

 brusone, as to compel the Piedmontese to import fresh seed 

 in 1829, from South Carolina. The American rice intro- 

 duced into Piedmont, escaped the brusone, but it was seve- 

 ral years before it adapted itself to the soil and climate. 



Some years ago, a traveller, finding rice growing in great 

 perfection on the mountains and highlands of Asia, particu- 



* If this remark be limited to the lowland rice, we fully agree with 

 it ; as the water and the materials it holds, either in suspension or 

 solution, and to which it is exposed through so long a period of its 

 growth, afford the greater part of the nutritive matter appropriated by 

 the plant. But if applied to upland rice, we must dissent in toto ; 

 for the rich, life-sustaining principles of this grain, draw largely on 

 the soils where water is not present ; for like the white grains, the 

 wheat, oats, and barley, its narrow, grass-like leaves do not draw 

 much from the atmosphere. The intelligent writer indirectly concedes 

 this in the following sentence but one. The soil becomes too dry for 

 it, simply because it is exhausted of thoae vital, fertilizing principles, 

 the salts and carbonaceous matters, which help to sustain the re- 

 quisite moisture in the soil, and which is one of the beneficial results , 

 of their presence in it. 



