June i, 1889.] THE TROPICAL AGRICULTURIST. 
Gives in a good season 30 bags rice at $2 40 72 00 
or §12 00 per acre, in 6 months, profit $ 47 92 
If they clean this rice it will give 15 bags 
and will cost: 
Growing $ 23 12 
Cleaning 19 32 
42 32 
15 bags cleaned at 32 cents per gallon, 
equal to $6-40 per bag, White Rice 96 00 
Profit $ 53 68 
The cost for scaring birds in the savannah is nil, the 
only birds to be seen are a species of wader resem- 
bling at a distance "Negro Cop," and they are now 
harmless. 
In putting a price on rice grown on the East Coast, 
the local selling value for paddy was given ; the 
cleaned rice is white, such as you see on the table, 
which is sold retail at 36 cents per gallon. I may 
mention that the command of water to let off and 
on at pleasure is of vital importance, when attempt- 
ing to grow anything in such pegass land, which burns 
up in dry weather to a cinder. 
Turning now to Anna Regina, as the most perfect 
mode of cultivating rice, entirely by spade and hoe, 
that I have seen or read of, the arrangement is as 
follows : — As to the land, the abandoned cane fields, 
by preference in the lowest lying section of the pro- 
perties, find most favour, as being the more readily 
put under water from the navigable canal. The arrange- 
ment is eight months rent free; at the expiration of 
that term $23-04 annually is paid in monthly instal- 
ments. An arrangement which refers more to the 
question of immigration is also entered into by 
which three days per week labour when called upon 
counts half rent.il, but fur the object of this paper 
I confine myself to tbe ordinary tenants' agreement 
of i$23'04 p er annum, of course, including water. 
Tne rice farmer, having signed his agreement, enters 
upon possession, and when land carries sage, waak- 
a-baki, and such like, it is preferred, as the land is 
in better heart than where simple nut and bahama 
grass forms a complete sod. The bush is now all 
chopped down with cutlass, and the cuttings when 
dry are partly carried away for fuel to cook food 
and the remainder is burned where it lies. 
The beds are what are known as round ridged, the 
small drain in many cases forming a hollow 6 feet 
at surface, 2 feet at bottom and 4 feet deep. The 
workman begins by reversing the order of cane culture, 
and delves the entire surface with all its noxious 
grasses a foot deep, and buries all in the drains which 
cost the sugar planters so much to dig. This work 
at once gets rid of all grass, and the hoe is set to 
work to chop the ground quite fine to a depth of 
4 to 5 inches; water is now let on, and the whole 
made into a puddle exactly as I have already des- 
cribed at Edinburgh ; in fact, the after treatment is 
exactly the same, and in every way resembles the 
best sysiem carried out in South Carolina. 
The Anna Regina paddy farmers seldom grow a 
ratoon crop, being satisfied to reap 3 full crops in 
the year after the preparation and planting. In the 
eight months allowed rent free first year, they establish 
and reap one crop, and have another well established, 
which covers preliminary heavy work in levelling 
down, &c, &c. 
Mr. McPhail, to whom I am indebted for the 
following figures, writes as follows : — " The first year 
when the beds have to be levelled, this process alone 
costing S16 and 820, they only secure one full crop, 
though the second is well established. It is fair to 
take up the working expenses at this stage, and I 
may add that the farmers who have prepared the 
land best are the most willing to pay rent punctually. 
The land with stubble is burnt off and hoed up, 
and converted into a proper puddle for receiving 
the rice plants, which are grown in a nursery. 
Such a nursery can be prepared for 82 cents. Nine 
strong women or very ordinary lads can dibble one 
acre in a day, and the same number can reap the grain 
S3 1 
with ordinary grass knives. The birds are kept off 
by scarecrows, aod children koock a tin pan, for wh'ctt 
an allowance of $1*20 per acre may be allowed ; weed- 
ing and burying the grass and other stray plan'.s, 
§1-50 per acre ; heading, carrying to barn, thresning and 
dressing for market, iucluding sack, 15 oents per bag. 
Thus summing up 1 acre 1 crop : — 
J Bag rice, preparing nursery $ 0 82 
Cutting and burning stubble 2 00 
Hoeing up the seed bed 2 00 
Diobling from nursery, 9 women 24 cents 2 16 
Weeding young crop ... ... ... ... 1 25 
Drivi ig birds, &c 1 47 
Reaping, men at 24 cents 1 90 
Heading to barn, threshing, dressing and )„ ^ 
bags, 20 boys at 15 cents i 
Cost on crop ... $ 14 60 
3 crops, one year's expenses $ 43 80 
Rent 23 04 
Total cost per acre $ 66 84 
By 3 crops, at 20 bags each, 60 at $2 $120 00 
Clear gain $ 53 16 
This leaves a fair margin of profit for the labour 
expended and I feel well within the mark in all my 
prices. 
I think these figures show that I was warranted in 
stating that " given water, rice can be grown in British 
Guiana to drive out the imported article." I have 
carefully studied the question of rice growing as far as I 
can find it laid down in books, and while 2 crops in a 
year is considered a wouderful yield in China, Japan, 
India, America and elsewhere, here we have well 
authenticated records of 3 crops in tbe year, and if 
ratoon crops were taken into account it would raise the 
return to 5 crops. Tw>'-nt< -three dollars renr. per annum 
is out of all proportion to the selling value of land. Mul- 
tiply that sum by 75,000 acres in cane cultivation 
$1,728,000? If the land owners could realize half that 
sum by their canefields, there would be no cry of hard 
times. 
Turning to improvements in threshing and dressing 
grain, my friend Mr. Cornish has suggested certain 
minor appliances to deal with the rice in small quantities 
for local consumption which I have sent for. There 
have been no end of patents for cleaning rice, but all 
seem to fail. I have myself introduced one machine by 
Wilson of London which played such havoc with the rice 
that it had to be given up. The late Mr. Oliver intro- 
duced a card machine shod with bent sted wire fixed 
into a band, which ran at a high velocity against a 
plain roller ; but this also failed. Sol am afraid there 
is no high road to rice cleaning. It must just be sub- 
jected to mill stones for breakmg the rough crust and 
then to stamps, such as are in use in large rice cleaning 
factories in Europe; where by the way, all rice is 
received from the East in the paddy stale, as the husk 
prevents destruction by weevils. 
The following description of rice preparation is from 
De B jw's Review, and embraces the most complete 
treatment of the subject that I have come across : — 
Process of Preparation. — The stones which are used 
for grinding rice should be five to six feet two inches, 
diameter, and eighteen inches thick at the centre. 
" The whole process of preparation may be de- 
scribed as follows : — From a shed attached to the mill 
house the rough rice is taken by means of elevators 
up to the highest apartment in the building, to be 
passed through a sand screen revolving nearly hori- 
zontally, which in sifting out the grit and small grain 
rice, separates also all foreign bodies and such headi 
of rice as were not duly threshed. 
"From tbe sand screen the sifted rough of large 
size is conveyed directly to the stones on the soma 
floor, where the husk is broken an.l ground off, thenca 
to a winri-fan below, where the chaff is separated and 
blown off. Tbe grain is now deposited in a long tin 
placed over the pestle shaft, and correspouding ; n 
length with it, whence the ground rice is delivered by 
wooden-conductors into tbe mortars on the ground floor 
