Cuar. XVI] CHINESE AGRICULTURE. 299 
and manured, and the second crop having now 
plenty of light and air, advances rapidly to ma- 
turity, and is ready for the reaping-hook about 
the middle of November. 
About one hundred miles further north, in the 
Shanghae district, the summers are too short to 
enable the husbandman to obtain a second crop of 
rice, even upon the Ning-po plain, and he is 
therefore obliged to content himself with one. 
This is sown at the end of May, and reaped at 
the beginning of October. 
A large quantity of rain always falls at the 
change of the north-east monsoon in May. This is 
of the utmost importance to the farmer, not only 
as regards his rice crops, but also as to many other 
operations at this season of the year. We are 
accustomed to hear a great deal of the machine-like 
regularity which pervades all the operations of the 
Chinese ; but a little investigation of the circum- 
stances in which they are placed —at least in so far 
as agriculture is concerned—will convince us that 
their practice is regulated, not so much by caprice 
and those “ Mede and Persian ” laws, as by the laws 
of nature herself, upon which the success of the 
varied operations of agriculture mainly depend, 
Thus the crops of rice and cotton are sown on the 
low lands, and the sweet potatoes are planted on 
the hills, year after year, exactly at the same time. 
But this regularity is not the effect of prejudice, 
nor in obedience to the imperial orders; it is 
simply the result of experience which has taught 
the farmer that this is the proper time for these 
