Book I. 



AGRICULTURE IN ASIA. 



161 



973. The maidenhair tree (Salisburia adiantifolia) is grown for its fruit, which Dr. 

 Abel saw exposed in quantities ; but whether as a fruit, a culinary vegetable, or a 

 medicine, he could not ascertain. Kaempfer says, the fruit assists digestion. 



974. The cordage plant (Sida tilicefolia) is extensively cultivated for the manufacture of 

 cordage from its fibres. The common hemp is used for the same purpose, but the sida 

 is preferred. A species of musa is also grown in some places, and its fibres used for 

 rope and other purposes. 



975. The common cotton, and also a variety bearing a yellow down, and from which, 

 without any dyeing process, the nankeen cloths are formed, is also grown in different 

 places. The mulberry is grown in a dwarf state, as in Hindustan. 



976. The ground nut {Arachis hypogtea) ; the arum esculentum, or eatable arum ; the 

 trapa bicornis ; the scirpus tuberosus, and nelumbium, all producing edible tubers, are 

 cultivated in lakes, tanks, or marshy places. 



977. The Nelumbium, Dr. Abel observes, with its pink and yellow blossoms, and 

 broad green leaves, gives a charm and productiveness to marshes, otherwise unsightly 

 and barren. The leaves of the plant are watered in the summer, and cut down close 

 to the roots on the approach of winter. The seeds are in size and form like a small acorn 

 without its cup ; are eaten green, or dried as nuts, and are often preserved in sweetmeats ; 

 they have a nut-like flavor. Its roots are sometimes as thick as the arm, of a pale-green 

 without, and whitish within ; in a raw state they are eaten as fruit, being juicy and of 

 a sweetish and refreshing flavor ; and when boiled arc served as vegetables. 



978. The Scirpus tuberosus, or water chestnut, 

 (fig. 1 55.) is a stoloniferous rush, almost without '^ ^^^ 

 leaves, and the tubers are produced on the stolones. 

 It grows in tanks, which are manured for its re- 

 ception about the end of March. A tank being 

 drained of its water, small pits are dug in its 

 bottom ; they are filled with human manure, and 

 exposed to the sun for a fortnight ; their contents 

 are next intimately blended with the slimy bottom 

 of the tank, and slips of the plant inserted. The 

 water is now returned to the tank, and the first 

 crop of tubers comes to perfection in six months. 

 (Rox. Coromandel.) 



979. The millet (Holcus) is grown on the banks of rivers, 

 and attains the height ot sixteen feet. It is sown in rows, and 

 after it comes up, panicum is sown between, which comes to 

 perfection after the other is cut down. 



980. Among the many esculent vegetables cul- 

 tivated in China, the petsai, a species of white cabbage, is in most general use. The 

 quantity consumed of it over the whole empire, is, according to all authors, immense ; 

 and Dr. Abel thinks it may be considered to the Chinese, what the potatoe is to the 

 Irish. It is cultivated with great care, and requires abundant manuring, like its 

 congeners of the brassica tribe. Boiled, it has the flavor of asparagus ; and raw, it 

 eats like lettuce, and is not inferior. It often weighs from fifteen to twenty pounds, 

 and reaches the height of two or three feet. It is preserved fresh during winter by 

 burying in the earth ; and it is pickled with salt and vinegar. 



981. Almost every vegetable of use, as food, in the arts, or as medicine, known to the 

 rest of the world, is cultivated in China, with perhaps a very few exceptions of equatorial 

 plants. The bamboo and cocoa-nut tree, as in Hindustan, are in universal use :. in- 

 digo is extensively cultivated ; sugar also in the southern provinces ; but it is rather 

 a luxury than an article of common consumption. It is used mostly in a coarse 

 granulated form ; but for exportation, and for the upper classes, it is reduced to its 

 crystallized state. Tobacco is every where cultivated, and in universal use, by all 

 ages, and both sexes. Fruits of every kind abound, but mostly bad, except the orange 

 and the lee-tchee, Dimocarpus litchi, botl) of which are probably indigenous. The art 

 of grafting is well known, having been introduced by the missionaries ; but they do not 

 appear to have taken advantage of this knowledge to the improvement of their fruits. 

 They have also an art which enables them to take off bearing branches of fruit, par- 

 ticularly of the orange and peach, and transfer them, in a growing state, to pots, for 

 their artificial rocks and grottos, and summer-houses. It is simply by removing a ring 

 of the bark, plastering round it a ball of earth, and suspending a vessel of water to drop 

 upon it, until the upper edge of the incision has thrown out roots into the earth. 



982. The live stock of Chinese agriculture is neither -abundant nor various. The 

 greater part of their culture being on a small scale, and performed by manual operations, 

 does not require many beasts of labor : their canals and boats supply the place of beasts 

 of burden : and their general abstemiousness renders animals for the butcher less neccs- 



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