291 OBTZA SATIYA 



what gibbous above, either blunt or acute or terminating in a 

 sharp, smooth, purple awn, which is short or many times longer 

 than the spikelet, the upper pale without obvious nerves or 

 3-nerved ; beneath the pales the rachis is expanded into a small 

 knob or callus. Lodicules 2, collateral, thick, fleshy, semi- 

 transparent, pointed. Stamens 6, hypogynous, anthers exserted, 

 linear, versatile. Ovary smooth, tapering ; styles 2, short, 

 stigmas red, with rough spreading hairs on all sides (asper- 

 gilliform). Fruit (caryopsis) enclosed in the persistent pales, 

 which, however, are not adherent to it, J of an inch long, 

 oblong-ovoid, blunt, smooth, somewhat compressed ; pericarp 

 very thin, adherent to testa ; embryo at the base of the narrow 

 diameter of the seed on the outside of the abundant horny 

 endosperm. 



Habitat. The Kice is no doubt native in India, in all parts of 

 which the wild form is common by the sides of tanks, ditches, 

 and rivers. According to Bret Schneider's researches it is also 

 doubtless indigenous to China. In both these countries it has been 

 cultivated very extensively from remote antiquity. It was very 

 early introduced into East Africa and Syria, and at the present day 

 it is also grown in immense quantities in all the subtropical and 

 tropical parts of the globe, having been long ago introduced into 

 America, where it has now the look of a native plant. In Europe, 

 Kice was introduced into the Mediterranean basin from Syria by 

 the Arabs in the middle ages ; it is now grown largely only in 

 the plain of Lombardy. In England it has been cultivated as a 

 curiosity from the days of Gerard, and may be seen treated as a 

 water plant in the hothouses of most botanic gardens. 



As is to be expected in the case of a cereal so long and extensively 

 cultivated, there is a very great number of varieties. Moon enu- 

 merates no less than 160 kinds distinguished by the Cinghalese, 

 and Eoxburgh gives some 40 or 50 cultivated in India, where, he 

 states, the wild form, though its grain is collected for use, is 

 never cultivated. Irrigation is necessary for most sorts, but some 

 varieties require little water, or can be grown even on ordinary 

 dry ground. The chief differences are found in the greater or less 



