CiiAP. XIV. 
RICE-CULTURE. 
229 
of the fields, and is ready for transplanting as soon as 
the ground has been ploughed up and prepared for their 
reception. This second, crop is ready for cutting in 
November. 
In the latitude of Ning-po, S0° north, the summers 
are too short to have the land cropped in the same way 
in which it is done in the south. The farmers here 
manage to have two crops of paddy in the summer by 
planting the second crop two or three weeks after the 
first, in alternate rows. The first planting takes place 
about the middle of May, and the crop is reaped in the 
beginning of August, at which time the alternate rows 
are only about a foot in height, and are still quite green. 
After the early crop is removed the ground is stirred up 
and manured, and the second crop, having now plenty 
of light and air, advances rapidly to maturity, and 
is ready for the reaping-hook about the middle of 
November. 
About one hundred miles farther 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 plan, 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 opera- 
tions of the Chinese ; but a little investigation of the 
