KICE. 289 



thresher by a conveyor, it is threshed, the straw taken off, then thrice winnowed 

 and twice screened, and the result in some cases exceeds a thousand bushels of 

 clean rough rice, the work of a short winter day. 



Humanity rejoices at these inventions at this transfer to water and steam, of 

 processes so slow and so exhausting to the human as well as to the animal frame 

 and in this feeling we are confident every planter deeply sympathises. More- 

 over, the relief they have aiforded in other respects has been perfectly inde- 

 scribable. Previous to these improvements all the finer portions of the winter 

 were appropriated exclusively to the milling and the threshing of the crop 

 with the flail, yet it is manifest they added not one particle to the value of the 

 property ; indeed, while going on, all other work, and all preparation for another 

 crop had to be suspended, so that the condition of the plantation was not pro- 

 gressive, but retrograde. 



A short recapitulation will show what has been accomplished by the enter- 

 prise of our planters in the last seventy years. At the close of the Eevolution 

 it is believed the rice fields were poorly drained, and when broken up were chieflj 

 turned with the hoe, then trenched with the hoe ; then came three or four hoe- 

 ings and as many pickings. The rice was then cut with the sickle and carried 

 in on the head, then threshed with the flail, then milled and dressed, in some 

 cases wholly by human labor, and in others by a rude machine, called a pecker 

 mill. Now, in 1852, the hoeing, the pickings, and the cutting with the sickle 

 remain unchanged ; but the lands are better drained, and in the turning the 

 plough has superseded the hoe ; the trenching, when, necessary, is done by 

 animal power; the rice, when cut, is carried in on a flat and wagon, then 

 threshed and milled by machinery, so perfect that it is difficult to imagine how 

 it can be surpassed. 



It is one hundred and fifty-nine years since the introduction of rice into 

 Carolina, and there are grounds for supposing that our people have accomplished 

 more during that period, in the cultivation and preparation of this grain, than 

 has been done by any of the Asiatic nations who have been conversant with its 

 growth for many centuries. We had the rare opportunity, a few years since, of 

 seeing a Chinese book on rice planting, which contained many engravings. The 

 language we could not read, but we comprehended a sufficient number of the 

 engravings to institute a comparison between their system and our own, and the 

 result was, in our method of irrigation we were their equals, while in economy 

 of cultivation, and in the preparation of the grain for market aitd for use, we 

 are greatly their superiors. Again, some six or seven years since the East India 

 Company, of London, sent an agent to this country to procure American cotton 

 seed, gins, and overseers, for the purpose of testing the practicability of raising 

 cotton by our method in India. This agent, Captain Bayles, when in Savannah, 

 was heard to say that he had especial directions from the Company to inform 

 himself minutely of our system of rice culture. Here, then, was an embassage 

 from the banks of the Ganges, a spot where rice has been cultivated probably for 

 twenty centuries, to inquire into the method of cultivation and preparation, of a 

 people amongst whom the grain had no existence one hundred and sixty 

 years ago." 



The following is the mode of culture for rice in Carolina : 

 It is sowed as soon as it conveniently can be after the vernal 

 equinox, from which period until the middle, and even the last of 

 May, is the usual time of putting it in the ground. It grows 

 best in low marshy land, and should be sowed in furrows twelve 

 inches asunder ; it requires to be flooded, and thrives best if six 

 inches under water ; the water is occasionally drained oif, and 

 turned on again to overflow it, for three or four times. 



"When ripe the straw becomes yellow, and it is either reaped 

 with a sickle, or cut down with a scythe and cradle, some time in 

 the month of September ; after which it is raked and bound, or 



