November i, 1889.] THE TROPICA!. AGRICULTURIST. 
363 
crops a year from time beyond the memory of any 
living person, and that in some particularly favour- 
able spots they manage to get six crops in two and a 
hall' years. 
The Burmese main crop consist of varieties of the 
" common rice " that ripens m six months. It is sown 
about June, and gathered in December following. 
The nursery grounds are sown on the higher laDd 
at the beginning of the rains, before the ground is 
ready for the main crop. When the plants are about 
eight inches high they are pulled up, roots and all, 
and tied in bundles, and carried by the boatload to 
supply those cultivators who are ready to plant out 
their land. The " paddy " lands are prepared for 
being planted by being lightly ploughed with a 
wooden plough, while they are under water, after 
the rains have set in. The crop is reaped with sick- 
les, but only the top of the stalk wittt the f ar is cut 
off ; the straw and stubble are l»-f t standing till spring- 
time, when they are burnt, which gives the land in 
Burma the only manure it ever gets. 
After harvest the grain is carted to the dry earthen 
threshing-floor, and either stacked or threshed out then 
and there, sometimes, in China a d Japan, wi h flails ; 
but generally, as in Burma, it is trodden out by oxen. 
The "paddy" is laid in a circle in the ceutre of the 
threshing-floor, and the oxen, tied together in line, are 
driven round the heap, the herdsman following wilh a 
stick, still singing on his way, as in the old harvest 
scenes depicted on the Theban tombN some three thou- 
sand years B.C. And still carrying out ancient command, 
tney do not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. 
The "paddy" is then stored in granaries, which in 
Burma are raised on piles some feet above the surface 
of the ground, built of bamboo wattle and daub. In 
China, where grain is very exiensiv ly stored throughou 1 
the empire as a provision a. ainst famine-, the granarie-s 
are larger and of solid masoury. From them seed is 
lent to indigent farmers iu the spring-time, to be 
recovered with interest after harvest. The Chinese 
mix the ash of the burnt husk with the stored " paddy" 
to preserve it from weevil, for which it is said to be 
effective. 
The " paddy " is next shelled by being passed through 
a small pair of millstones or cylinders of the same 
shape made of hard wood, set on end, groved 
iu the working surface. These work at such a distance 
apart as serves to remove the husk by friction without 
breaking the grain. And they are generally made 
large enough to require three or four men, who work 
them by means of a long handle or connecting-rod 
attached to the upper cylinder. 
The graiu and chaff are separuted by being dropped 
together from a height in a light breeze, recalling the 
description iu the 1st Psalm, of the ungodly who " are 
like the chaff which the wind drivel h away." Or the 
grain is tossed up on bamboo trays with wooden shovels 
against the wind. In China, Japan, and Burma, how- 
ever, the winnowing-machine, made on the English 
system by Chinese carpenters, is rapidly replacing the 
older method ; just as in the Burmese and Cochin 
China rice-ports the European steam machinery for 
shelling and winnowing is daily diminishing the quan- 
tity of the hand-cleaned article. 
After the rice is shelled, inner skin adhering to the 
grain must be removed which is done by pounding 
it in a wooden or stone mortar with hard wood beaters, 
until the friction has entirely removed the outer skin. 
This process must not be confused with that of 
Eounding or pulverising in a mortar. The pestle or 
eater is of another shape, and the mortar holds a 
larger quantity of grain at a time, so that the impact 
of the beater will not break it. It is referred to iu 
Proverbs xxvii. 22 : " Though thou shouldest bray a 
fool in a mortar among ' graiu ' with a pestle, yet will 
not his foolishness depart from him." Had our trans- 
lators known the mysteries of rice and barley milliug, 
they would not have translated the word as " wheat," 
which means literally " decorticated grain," or as 
Herodotus and Pilny call it, " ptisan " — a process 
never applied to wheat. 
There were in 1877 forty-five steam rice-mills in 
British Burma, which are mainly worked for the pre- 
paration of cargo rice, i. e., four parts by measurement 
of husked rico to one of paddy, in which condition 
most of the Burmese crop is shipped to Europe. These 
mills have lately been introducing machinery for 
making " cleaned rice." This enables them to supply 
the Burmese with cheaper rice than they can clean by 
hand, besides supplying direct a large foreign trade 
which, until lately, was in the hands of the English 
millers. 
There are few busier scenes than the port of Rangoon 
in the height of the shipping season. What with the 
cargo boats coming down ihe rivers bringing " paddy " 
to the mills, the coasting dhows and st-amers taking 
away <h« cl<-aned rice t> the Straits, China, and Lidia, 
and the lari^e sailing ships aud sti-amers loading tor 
Europe a d Australia and America, the peop.e have 
a busy time of it. The mi Is work night and day, and 
no one who has seen the Burmese labourer running 
along with a two-hundredweight bag of rice on his 
shou'ders, working in a hot son and for long hours, will 
preach the usually accepted rubbish that mankind can- 
not labour aud thrive on a diet mainlv composed of rice. 
The rice-milling process of tht English rice-mills in 
London and Liverpool is but a modification and repeti- 
tion of the processes already described carried out 
with greater detail and with self-acti ng machiuery. The 
fivr-part cargo rice is brought from Burma in two- 
hundred- weight bags; these are uuioade i at the docks 
au<i carted to the mills. 
Th>y are emptied into a biu, whence the rice is 
eleva ed by an endless band called an elevator, with 
6mail cans attached, to the top-st jrey of the mill, atd 
passed through a sieve to fre<-> it fr^m sticks, stones, 
straw, and sometimes a rupee or a broken bangle. 
Then it passes through the shellmg-stoues. They are 
large millstones, six fret in diameter, revolving 120 
revolutions per minute, dressed hollow in the cet'ire 
and flat for twelve inches at tne rim, where they are 
set the length ot the grain apart, so tuat as the rice 
passes through this narrow space tue husks may be 
crackud off with the least possible breakage to the 
grain itself. The chaff, meal, and ric« from this process 
pass through a screen to remove the meal ; then a fan 
or winnowing-machine is used to take out the chaff, 
and the rice is ready for being " barley milled." 
The barley-mill, as its name implies, is a modification 
of the well-known machine used throughout Europe 
for making " pearled " oarley. I: condsts of a ch cular 
cheese-shaped stone, four feet in diameter aud two 
feet wide, which revoles very quickly inside a slowiy 
revolving wooden casing covered with fine wire-netting. 
About five-inch space is left on all sides between the 
stone and the casing, which is partly filled with rice, 
and the machine is started. 
After barley-milling, the rice is again elevated to 
the top of the building, and passes down through 
two or three polishers. They are inverted conical 
wooden drums about four or five feet in diameter and 
six feet deep, covered with sheepskin with long wool 
outside. They revolve about two hundred revolutions 
per minute inside a fine wire-covered casing of the 
same shape, which is firmly secured in its place, leaving 
6mall space between the woolly surface of the drum 
and the casing. As the rice passes through this space 
the meal adhering to it is driven through the wire 
and the rice is polished. 
It is then winnowed once or twioe to remove any 
remaining busks, and it finally passes over a sieve 
which is kept moviDg with a quick kind of shake, 
and which is set at a slant from top to bottom and 
with holes graduated in size. Thus separation is 
effected into whole rice, and middling broken, and 
small broken rice, known as " smalls-" 
During the twenty-five years from 1854 to 1879 the 
increase of consumption is something altogether mar- 
vellous, and (taking into consideration the liability to 
fluctuate) it has been marked and steady, as any one 
who notes the following figures will at oace perceive: — 
In 1854 the total quantity of rice exported from 
Burma was 69,820 tons, all of which was Akyab rice ; 
in 1862 it was nearly trebled, being 191,861 tjus, of 
which 04,785 were Rangoon, 98,751 were Akyab, and 
28,825 Basaein. In 1870 the increase, though not so 
