318 Transactions op the American Institute. 



regulating the flow of water by means of a gate. The few slight 

 levees and ditches required to prepare the prairie land for rice 

 culture are inexpensive. The water is let on soon after the seed 

 is sown, and is permitted to cover the ground until the rice is well 

 grown. Boys are employed to keep off the swarms of rice birds 

 until the grain is out of the ground. Oxen and not mules are 

 employed in rice culture. The ground is too soft for the latter/?^ 

 By careful drainage, however, the ground can be kept dry enough 

 to be plowed with horses. 



I have often seen them raising rice in Louisiana just as I once 

 saw them producing it along the Nile — reaped with a sickle, trodden 

 out on " threshing floors," with mean little Creole horses, and the 

 chaff separated from the rough rice by throwing them up into the 

 air on a windy diB.y. When I told them that in the North, all this 

 work would be done by machinery; that a reaper, driven by a lady 

 even, could easily cut from eight to ten acres per day, and a 

 thresher easily thresh five hundred bushels of rough rice in ten 

 hours, both processes with little expense, they looked upon mo 

 with incredulity; and when I proposed to a wealthy sugar planter 

 to introduce a reaper and thi-eshing machine for rice culture, he 

 discouraged me, saying that the " poor people " would doubtless 

 drive such an innovator out of the parish, on the ground of his 

 having too much to do with the " evil one." 



Mr. Solon Robinson. — I am glad the rice planters there are so 

 far advanced as to use even plows. In South Carolina I saw two 

 hundred acres of rice planted entirely with hoes. At a sale on one 

 of the islands of the effects of a deceased planter, the only agri- 

 cultural implements were hoes; and there was only one old coach 

 wheel in a shed. 



CALIFORNIA "WHEAT AND FLODB. 



Mr. William Lawton. — I have brought a package of the cele- 

 brated California wheat, to let the Club see what a beautiful grain 

 is produced in that State. It makes a choice quality of flour, but 

 we have to pay an extortionate price for it. Much of the flour that 

 is brought from California is now offered in half barrel sacks for 

 the accommodation of small families. But it is far better to have 

 the flour made after the wheat arrives here than to purchase the 

 real California flour, as the flour that is shipped at the Califor- 

 nia ports for New York, during the long voyage on the water, will 

 be more or less damaged by absorbing the noxious odors which 



