CEREAL CULTIVATION AND CROPS 73 
wheat, barley, and millets are grown mostly in the coastal regions. 
The wheat crop of Asiatic Turkey is about.45,000,000 bushels. In 
Caucasia wheat ascends to 6,500 feet, barley 1,500 feet higher; the 
lowlands on both sides of this range produce rice, maize, and wheat. 
In striking contrast to the great sterile belt is the extreme fertility 
of S.E. Asia, the monsoon region with periodic and abundant rains. 
In India, barley is largely grown in the Punjab and the north-west, 
while the cultivation of wheat “extends through every district of 
the North-West Provinces, Oudh, the Punjab, Sind, the Central 
Provinces, and Berar; also through every part of the Bombay 
Presidency, with the exception of some of the coast districts ; it is 
also grown in many parts of the interior of the Madras Presidency.” 
There are about 25,000,000 acres under wheat in India, and the 
yearly crop is 250,000,000 bushels, On the Himalayan slopes, the 
distribution in vertical zones is somewhat as follows: rice, up to 
5,000-6,000 feet ; wheat (often associated with maize and barley), up 
to 9,000-10,000 feet ; barley ascending to 12,000 feet. The acreage 
under maize is only about one-twelfth that of wheat. Oats are little 
cultivated, and chiefly for the horses of Europeans. Rice is ex- 
tensively cultivated throughout the continent, and is the staple 
crop in the Ganges delta, where two harvests are general, with an 
occasional third, but smaller one; the average yield per acre is 
Jo-12 maunds (1 maund=8z2 lbs.). Most varieties of rice are 
semi-aquatic, but there are some which grow on the hillsides, 
ascending to 8,000 feet. Taking India asa whole, however, neither 
rice nor wheat is the predominant grain, but millets, of which 
there are a great many kinds, e.g. Sorghum vulgare, Pennisetum 
typhoideum, Eleusine coracana, Setaria ttalica, Panicum miliaceum, 
P. miliare, P. frumentaceum and P.colonum, Paspalum scrobicula- 
zum, and Coix lachryma. The great plain of China, embracing the 
basins of the Hoang-Ho and Yang-tse-Kiang, is one of the vastest 
and richest lowland plains in the world, with a deep loess of inex- 
haustible fertility. Inthe northern part of this plain, wheat and 
millets predominate, associated in smaller proportion with barley 
and maize ; in the central and southern parts, rice, often associated 
with wheat. Wheat- and paddy-fields often adjoin each other. 
The rice-growing tracts support the densest population in the 
world. Japan, with a climate greatly modified, like that of the 
British Isles, by a warm ocean current from the south, and with an 
abundant rainfall during the monsoon, produces rice and wheat as 
staples, the wheat-crop being 15,000,000 bushels. Millets, barley, and 
maize are minor crops. Throughout the Indo-Chinese peninsula, 
rice everywhere predominates, in the low, marshy, steaming plains, 
and in the valleys and deltas of the great rivers, the quantity pro- 
duced defying computation. Rice is also the staple cereal through- 
out Malaysia, sometimes associated with maize. 
The continent of Africa, like that of Asia, has an immense 
desert belt, the Sahara, where cultivation is impracticable ; but in 
remarkable contrast is the extremely fertile delta of the Nile, with 
a deep alluvial soil annually inundated, and producing luxuriant 
