326 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



dollars, and such a room would usually be occupied by three or 

 four persons. The house varies in value, from the twenty-dollar 

 cabin of the poor to the thousand-dollar dwelling of the rich. 

 The value of the land in the villages in which the agriculturists 

 live is from six to eight hundred dollars an acre. 



As the emigration of men is constant, and the smothering of 

 female infants is common, it is probable that the land will sup- 

 port no more than its present population. One sixth of an acre to 

 each mouth to be filled is commonly declared to be the least that 

 will enable the cultivator to live upon his own land, even with the 

 highest tillage and the utmost frugality. One acre, tilled by the 

 peasant proprietor alone, will feed six persons — the peasant, his 

 wife, his aged father and mother, and his two young children. It 

 will yield rice, hulled in the house, and vegetables, raised between 

 rice-crops, sufficient for food. The straw and stubble will serve 

 as fuel, and the pig and fowls will supply meat. The clothing 

 will be woven and made by the wife, while the old couple take 

 care of the children. The aged and the young are thus provided 

 for through the land which has been the property of the one and 

 will be the inheritance of the other. If dirt, superstition, and 

 mendacity were eliminated from such a home, its inmates would 

 appear eminently fit to survive. A process of natural selection 

 has doubtless adapted the Chinese to their environment. 



Two brothers, aged thirty-one and thirty-two years, inherited 

 from their father one acre of land, half of which is watered. Their 

 house, with the ground on which it is built, is worth fifty, their 

 furniture fifteen, their clothing twenty, and their farming appli- 

 ances thirty dollars. They live as well as do their neighbors, have 

 paid up a debt inherited with their land, and are now laying up 

 money to invest in wives. Twenty years ago a wife could be 

 betrothed for thirty dollars, whereas none can now be obtained 

 for less than a hundred dollars, and the price is rapidly rising. 

 Last year they got twenty-seven dollars' worth of rice from one 

 half their farm, after having put on twelve dollars' worth of fer- 

 tilizers. On the other half they planted sugar-cane, put on fifteen 

 dollars' worth of manure, and sold the standing crop for forty dol- 

 lars. The younger brother did nearly all the work. 



Pong Hia lives in a village of three hundred persons, in which 

 about thirty men are land-owners, having altogether forty-five 

 acres of land. Pong Hia owns two acres, inherited from the father 

 who adopted him. His land is worth one thousand dollars. His 

 family consists of ten persons. He is himself forty-six years old, 

 his wife is forty-one, his son is twenty-two, his son's wife is twen- 

 ty-one, his four daughters are from ten to seventeen, and his two 

 grandchildren are three and seven years old. He and his son till 

 the land, hiring help at harvest-time, and weaving straw mats on 



