40 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



Mediterranean— to the Nile Delta, Sicily, and Spain. Even now 

 the rice-trade of Eastern Africa and the Mascarenes lies entirely in 

 their hands. Through the same agency, rice culture penetrated 

 through inner Africa to the tropical West Coast, where it is, how- 

 ever, carried on only in certain localities, as in Ashantee on the 

 Volta, and in Liberia, whose coloured colonists introduced it from 

 America. 



In Egypt rice-culture is confined to the Delta region, being 

 especially important at Rosetta and Damietta. 



On the Balkan peninsula, land and climate occasionally are 

 favourable to rice-culture, but the lazy Turks never. Where it used 

 to flourish, as on the Maritza, the great negligence of the Govern- 

 ment has caused it to disappear. The same is true in part also 

 of Portugal and Spain. Rice is still grown in the latter country, 

 in so far as the old aqueducts in the huertas of Valencia permit it. 



Among European States, Italy alone plays an important part as 

 a rice producer. In Lombardy, especially about Vercelli, in Pied- 

 mont, Venetia, and the ^Emilia (but little in Sicily and Tuscany), 

 there is raised yearly about 70,000,000 lire worth of rice, on an area 

 of about 230,000 ha., so that rice-culture is an important factor 

 of the national prosperity. 



Let us now cast a glance at the New World, to complete this short 

 survey. The first attempts to introduce rice in the Carolines date 

 from 1647. In 1694 some more seed rice came to Charleston in 

 a Dutch ship (from Madagascar), and was divided among the 

 colonists by the governor, Smith. This was the basis of the rice- 

 culture, which developed rapidly from that time. It is spread 

 to-day over South Carolina and Georgia, and extends also some 

 distance into neighbouring States. The total production, in the 

 United States, of this most valuable of all sorts of rice is reckoned 

 at 4,000,000 kg. 



Rice-culture has never attained much importance in the Spanish- 

 American republics, though it has in Brazil, where it is carried on 

 in the coast provinces between the Amazon and San Francisco rivers. 



The majority of the world's inhabitants eat rice ; and for at least 

 one-third of them it is the chief daily food. It is estimated that 

 a Malay labourer of Farther India consumes monthly twenty- 

 eight kg. of rice, and a Siamese as much as thirty-two kg., while 

 the Chinaman and Japanese requires also not less than one kg. 

 daily, if his food consists principally of rice. In Europe the Turks 

 and the English are the greatest rice consumers ; the former be- 

 cause the chief ingredient of their national dish, the Pilau, is rice 

 boiled in water, and the latter using large quantities in making 

 puddings. 



The chief sources of supply are the Indian ports of Calcutta, 

 Akyab, Malmein, Bassein, and Rangoon, also Bangkok and Batavia, 

 Egypt, Northern Italy, South Carolina, and Brazil. 



Rice contains less nourishment than most of the other kinds of 



