212 TRANSACTIONS OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE. 



wood is apt to grow light, and as the Western soil is naturally in the same 

 condition, that must be the cause. 



The Chairman. — Unless the pear trees are very highly manured, the 

 trees grow slowly and the wood is hard, not porous. 



Chinese Agriculture. 



Dr, McGowan, who has been many years a resident of China, gave the 

 Club many interesting items about that country, and about the advantages 

 that might be derived from a more intimate knowledge of its interior, as 

 well as other portions of India wliich are almost entirely unknown to the 

 " outside barbarians," as all the rest of the world are called by the Chinese. 

 Dr. McGowan thinks that there are many things cultivated in China that 

 would be useful hei'e, and as their soil and climate are so various, it would 

 be easy to adapt things from there to some portion of our country, which 

 is almost equally various. He does not think, however, that the culture of 

 tea will ever be successful in this country, owing to the great amount of 

 manual labor necessary. The bamboo, he thinks, might be grown here and 

 made useful. In China it is almost a necessity of life. All the paper is 

 made of bamboo; the rags are needed to make soles for the people's shoes. 

 At the present time, if we had the same stock of paper materials that 

 China has, we shmild hear nothing of high prices. Among other useful 

 plants, there are some eighty varieties of rice, some one of which is adapted 

 to each locality. 



There are many plants grown for dyeing", some of which might be worthy 

 of our attention. Some of the animals are also valuable, notwithstanding 

 the disfavor that Chinese fowls and sheep have fallen into. 



The cotton of India deserves more attention than it has yet I'eceived, 

 because it is grown from lat. 30° up to as rigorous a climate as St. Peters- 

 burg. Some of those varieties certainly can be grown in our Northern 

 States as well as Chinese sugar-cane. The celebrated rice-paper is made 

 of the pith of a plant that would grow in this latitude. It is very light, 

 and applicable to a great many useful purposes, one of which is artificial 

 flowers. There is the paper mulberry tree of Japan — it could be grown 

 here. What we want is some system about collecting and sending home 

 all the things most likely to become valuable to the agriculture and the. 

 arts of this country. 



Prof. Mapes. — It is a question whether we should derive much benefit 

 from the methods of agriculture pursued by the Chinese, but there are 

 many things in the arts known to that singular people which the rest of 

 the world does not know. For instance, the knot that fastens the bamboo 

 strips around the tea chests, simple as it appears, has long defied the skill 

 of our expert sailors. No one that I have ever heard of has been able to 

 produce an imitation of that knot, while the string is tight round the chest. 

 The whole business of putting up tea is a mystery which no one here will 

 attempt to imitate. Look at the soldering of the lead inside the chest; it 

 is beyond the art of any tinsmith in this country; and the paper in which 

 the tea is first placed; it is totally unlike ours, that it extracts no flavor 

 from the finest tea; and the box, so light and yet so strong that it carries 

 its contents safely to all parts of the world. The art of paper making in 



