86 VEGETABLE SUBSTANCES. 



avail themselves, and dearth to them is attended with 

 almost all the evils of famine.' 



If a scarcity of food should be experienced in this 

 country, the .great bulk of the common people, nay 

 even the very poorest among them, have, generally 

 speaking, still some articles, that in foreign countries 

 would be considered luxuries, which they can forego, 

 some property which they can sacrifice, in order to 

 satisfy the cravings of hunger. In India, on the 

 contrary, and in most of the countries where rice 

 forms the principal article of human food, the labour- 

 ing classes are poor in the extremest sense of the 

 word. Having few artificial wants, they are without 

 those habitual incentives to exertion which actuate 

 so powerfully and so beneficially people of the same 

 rank in countries like our own. If they can acquire 

 a meal for themselves and their families they have 

 little thought about higher comforts ; the price of la- 

 bour in such countries is, in fact, equal to very little 

 beyond the purchase of the lowest description of 

 food ; the Indian labourer is contented with the rud- 

 est hut as a place of shelter ; he is without what 

 we are accustomed to consider the most indispensable 

 articles of household furniture, and his clothing con- 

 sists of a few yards of the commonest cotton cloth. 

 When the price of his ordinary food advances 

 beyond the usual rate, he is sunk into immediate 

 wretchedness ; he has no fund whereon he can draw 

 for assistance, and the wages of his labour are so far 

 from advancing under these circumstances, that the 

 contrary tendency is uniformly experienced ; and 

 the competition for employment is increased while 

 the means of paying for labour are diminished. 



Some botanical writers enumerate four varieties of 

 rice which they consider as being originally distinct 

 from each other ; while others have been of opinion 



