48 



AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



a medium-sized handsome grain, with a dull silky lustre and glassy- 

 fracture. It is very palatable. This especially holds good of the 

 valuable sorts from the provinces of Higo and Mino. It was from 

 the latter that the household of the Tokugawa Sh6gun in Yedo 

 always drew its supply. A part of the rice of Japan is used in 

 making Sake, or rice-beer. (See the chapter on this subject.) 

 Rice-straw is not much used for foddering or bedding cattle, nor for 

 thatching roofs, but it is chiefly employed in an industry of no little 

 importance ; sandals (for men and beasts of burden), rope, and other 

 packing materials are prepared from it. 



Of the various analyses of important Japanese food-stuffs which 

 have recently been published, the following, with reference to rice, 

 may conclude this subject : — 



Table I. 



In these analyses, A, B, and C, refer to unhulled, and D, to hulled 

 rice. The first, with Table II., was published by Kellner in Nobbe's 

 *• Landwirthschaftliche Versuchsstationen," vol. xxx., 1884; the 

 last, by Kreusler and Dafert, in the " Landwirthschaftliche Jahr- 

 bucher," vol. xiii., p. 767. Kellner found no difference worthy of 

 remark in the chemical composition of swamp rice, mountain rice 

 and glutinous rice. On the other hand, the other two chemists 

 state most emphatically that the starch of the glutinous rice gave 

 a brown iodine reaction, instead of the dark blue of ordinary rice- 

 starch. This difference was, moreover, already mentioned by 

 Atkinson, on p. 2 of his treatise on " The Chemistry of Sake-brew- 

 ing," (Tokio, 1 881). But this by no means settles the question 

 as to the cause of the unusual glutinosity of the meal of Oryza 

 gijitinosa, Rumph. 



I received samples of the three chief kinds of rice from last 

 year's harvest in Japan, all three of them being yellow-awned rice 

 and scarcely distinguishable when unhulled. The weight of one 

 hundred grains of paddy was 2,672 gr. for glutinous rice, 2,560 gr. 

 for swamp rice (Oku), 2,209 gr. for mountain rice, and of hulled 



