bread of the masses. The bar- 

 ley and rye crops of the earth 

 together would fill more than 

 t w o million freight cars, 

 enough to more than belt the 

 earth at the Equator. 



In Japan, when the people 

 get too poor to eat rice they 

 resort to barley, and it is said 

 that there is a social distinc- 

 tion drawn between the rice- 

 eating and the barley-eating 

 natives. Barley formerly was 

 more frequently used in west- 

 ern Europe than it is today; 

 it was the cereal from which 

 the goose pie was made in the 

 early days of England. 



In bulk, oats is the greatest 

 of all the cereal crops of the 

 world, though in weight it is 

 surpassed by several others. 

 It was Doctor Johnson, I be- 

 lieve, who said that they fed 

 oats to horses in England and 

 to men in Scotland. The re- 

 tort was that Scotland was 

 famous for its men and Eng- 

 land for its horses. Though 

 oats figure mainly in the 

 world's diet as a breakfast 

 food, still the total used as 

 human food is an important 

 one. 



ASIA THE HOME OF RICE 



Although the United States 

 produces more than 700,000,- 

 000 pounds of rice, this is but 

 a drop in the bucket as compared with 

 the production of Asia. That continent, 

 although making a remarkably poor 

 showing in its production of live stock 

 and those cereals which we most exten- 

 sively grow, has almost a monopoly of 

 the production of rice. Out of the total 

 world's production of 162,000,000,000 

 pounds, it grows 159,000,000,000. Per- 

 haps nine-tenths of all the rice eaten in 

 the world is eaten by the Asiatics. To 

 the great masses of Asia's unnumbered 

 millions it is largely both bread and meat 

 (see page 38). 



The rice crop must be grown in water, 

 the fields being kept flooded the greater 

 part of the time until it matures. This 

 necessitates a system of canals or other 

 means of irrigation. In many parts of 



TWOS COMPANY' 



Photograph by A. W. Cutler 

 INCIDENTALLY A WHEAT-ElELD 

 COURTSHIP 



China and Japan the coolie laborers are 

 always kept busy pumping water for the 

 rice fields. In some cases they raise the 

 water by hand from one level to another 

 by buckets ; in others, primitive water- 

 wheels are equipped with treading-boards, 

 so that the men can turn the wheels with 

 their feet ; still other wheels are turned 

 by animal power (see page 39). 



In the Philippines, Java, and parts of 

 southern Asia thousands of water buf- 

 faloes are used to drag the plows and 

 harrows through the mud in preparing 

 the seed bed for the crop. In the chief 

 rice-raising countries the harvest time is 

 an important event. At the beginning 

 the natives often have picnics : in Java, 

 they erect little temples, about the size of 

 a pigeon-house, containing an offering of 



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