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290 



•];HE ILLINOIS F^HMER. 



sus of 1840, rice was included among the 

 agricultural productions ofillinois. We find 

 by the census of 1850, that a considerable 

 quantity was raised in Buchanan county, 

 Missouri, which is in the same latitude as 

 Sangamon, Illinois. 



A small patch was successfully cultivated 

 the present year, by a friend of mine, in 

 Bluffdale. The seed was obtained from D. 

 B. Tuthill, Esq., of Walbridge, Pulaski 

 county, a gentleman whose enterprise and 

 moral worth do honor to our State. No 

 more seed was procured than was contained 

 in a letter of an ounce weight; for it was the 

 object of my friend merely to test its suc- 

 cessful growth in this county, the present 

 year, and raise seed for the next. The let- 

 ter containing the rice failed to reach hiui 

 till about two weeks later than it should 

 have been planted, yet it ripened in good 

 season, and yielded abundantly. I saw it 

 frequently, in every stage of its growth, and 

 can attest that the experiment was decidedly 



successful. 



With proper attention, any farmer in Illi- 

 nois can raise enough for the use of his own 

 family, and that, too, with a trifling amount 

 of labor. Like every other plant of the Nat- 

 ural Order of Graminae, rice has a strong 

 propensity to adapt itself to the climate 

 where it is attempted to be raised. It is 

 probable that in the most northern counties 

 of this State but a small proportion of the 

 first year's planting would fully ripen, if the 

 seed came from a latitude far south. But by 

 planting that which matured, it would adapt 

 itself to the season. Every farmer is famil- 

 iar with the fact that Indian corn, of what- 

 ever variety, soon becomes acclimated. The 

 small dwarf corn, raised in the most norther- 

 ly regions of the Canadas, in three years at- 

 tains at the South, the height of the ordi- 

 nary corn of that region, and requires as long 

 a season to arrive at maturity. As much 

 corn to the acre, on an average, is raised in 

 North America in the latitude of Quebec, as 

 at the equator. At the north, nature econ- 

 omizes the short season allowed her, by ex- 

 pending as little as possible of her energies 

 upon a useless redundancy ofstaUc, but de- 

 votes ihem to perfecting the grain. The 

 same law is manifest in the production of 

 rice. As we advance toward a higher lati- 

 tude, the height of the culm diminishes, 

 without sensibly decreasing the yield of 

 grain. There is a limit beyond which rice, 

 like all other vegetable productions, cannot 

 be successfully grown ; yet it is believed, 

 that if due attention is paid, that limit will 

 not be found in Illinois. A little more than 

 a century ago, when a Frenchman brought 

 to Louisiana from St. Domingo, a few cut- 

 tings of the sugar cane, and planted them in 



his garden, over which the commercial street 

 of Tchapitoulas, New Orleans, now runs, it 

 was regarded as a vegetable curiosity, with- 

 out the siightcstanticipation that a day would 

 or ever couhl arrive, when the cane of the 

 tropics would be naturalized in Louisiana, 

 and sugar became the great staple produc- 

 tion of that region. This plant, for many 

 years has gradually, by the law of acclima- 

 tion, been extending its culture farther and 

 farther north, and it is difficult to say at 

 what point nature would have pronounced 

 her fiat, ^^ thus fur shalt thou go, and no far- 

 thcry'' had not the Sorgho sncre stepped in- 

 to the arena, and presented our farmers with 

 a valuable substitute. 



It is not pretended that even upland rice 

 does not require a good share of moisture. — 

 This is also true of all plants of the same 

 Natural Order. Hardly a summer passes in 

 Illinois in which there are not times when 

 from the long absence of rain the corn crop 

 would be sensibly benefitted by artificial ir- 

 rigation. The saying that "rice is fond of 

 wet feet," is applicable, in a greater or less de- 

 gree, to every variety of the plant. But, 

 uo farm in this State can be so destitute of 

 water, that a few square rods of rice cannot, 

 with a triflng amount of labor, be irrigated 

 when irrigation is needful. 



The quantity of seed required is compara- 

 tively small, for numerous stalks spread out 

 from a single gram, and it should be planted 

 in drills at a sufficient distance from each 

 other to permit the use of a hoe. 



The average yield to the acre, in the Uni- 

 ted States, asce;t:iiued by actual enquiry in 

 taking the last census, is much greater than 

 the average yield of wheat. From the six- 

 teenth of an acre, if cultivated with the care 

 that may easily be bestowed upon so smalNa 

 piece of ground, it is believed that from fifty 

 to eighty pouiuls of rough rice can safely be 

 expected. This computation is a very mod- 

 erate one, and below the average yield. It 

 should be planted as early in the Spring as 

 the season will admit of sowing tobacco seed, 

 which in this State is usually in March, or 

 early in April. 



It may be ofTcrod as an objection to its cul- 

 tivation that rice, like barley, is covered with 

 a hard glume or hull, of which it must be di- 

 vested before it can be used for human food, 

 and that the machine by wliicli the large rice 

 planters perform the operation of hulling, is 

 costly. The rice-mill has indeed done for 

 that crop what Whitney's invention has done 

 for that of cotton. In 1840 there were 

 eighty million pounds of rice raised in the 

 United States. In 1850, only ten years la- 

 ter, that crop had risen to two hundred and 

 fifteen millions of pounds. At the latter ' 



date, there were no less than one hundred 

 and seventy five thousand acres cultivated, 

 and five hundred and fifty-one planters who 

 raised each twenty thousand pounds or up- 

 wards. But, long before the rice-mill was 

 invented, rice was raised in the United States 

 for exportation. It was cleaned of the glume 

 by pounding it, by hand, in large wooden 

 mortars, similar to those which our early set- 

 tlers employed to beat their corn into hom- 

 iny. No one can have traveled extensively 

 in our southern and south-western States 

 without liaving frequently noticed particles 

 of rice cultivated solely for the use of the 

 family. It is raised for the same purpose in 

 not a few of the counties of Kentucky. It 

 is believed that among these small cultiva- 

 tors less than one in a hundred have their 

 rice hulled otherwise than by the wooden 

 mortar. That primitive mode has been, from 

 time immemorial, and still is, used in all the 

 rice-growing regions of the East. For a 

 small crop the mortar is amply sufficient. — 

 We should vote the owner of one of our im- 

 mense wheat fields, decidedly behind the 

 age, who should attempt to harvest his crop 

 with a sickle, instead of a reaper. But if 

 his field consisted only of a half acre, we 

 should think the sickle or the cradle by far 

 the niost convenient instrument. 



Probably, the method by which, according 

 to Father Bourzes, rice in India is divested 

 of its hull, might be adopted here with great 

 advantage. The rough-rice, before pound- 

 ing, is thrown into water moderately hot, and 

 suffered to remain there for a few minutes, 

 when it is taken out and dried in the sun. — 

 It is then freed from the glume with a very 

 little pounding, and leaves the grains of rice, 

 he says, far less broken than in Europe 

 where this process of macerating it previous 

 to pounding, is not practiced. 



Some will ask — cuibono — what is the us© 

 of "heing at the trouble" of raising rice, when 

 we have in Illinois, wheat, corn, and other 

 products in abundance for food ? If, to avoid 

 effort, mental and physical, is the great de- 

 sideratum of life, the questioner stops far too 

 short. He should extend his enquiry and 

 ask, why it would not be better for us, like 

 the roving Tartar, to live upon horse flesh 

 and mare's milk ? Horses can be raised with 

 as little labor on the vast plains of the far 

 west, as ou the steppes of Tartary. Why 

 not, like him, when wo need a now suit of 

 clothes, call in the aid of a tailor that works 

 in horse hide, who in a few minutes would 

 fit to the whole person a single garment fresh- 

 ly taken from the back of a three year old 

 colt ? Such a suit could be obtained with 

 very little "trouble," would last for years, do 

 away with the labor now required of us to 



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