4i8 
returns so small a yield compared with the cultivated 
varieties. Rice is the grain food most jDreferred by 
half the human race. In the Indian peninsula it is 
the principal food of 100,000,000 of the people ; so 
strongly are they impressed with the superiority of 
rice as a food that in Southern India a peasant will 
indicate his well-to-do or impoverished condition by 
telling you that he eats rice twice a day, or once only, 
or not at all. But the poorest people rarely taste it ; 
they eat varieties of millet, raggy deri, or other 
cheaper foods. 
Tradition teaches that rice is the most ancient food 
of India, and as such it is invested with almost a 
sacred character. It is used in many of the sacrifices 
and other religious ceremonies. One of the purifactory 
rites after birth is feeding the Hindoo infant with 
rice during six months. The Hindoo hoiTsehold must 
daily perform the five acts of worship, the fourth of 
which is scattering rice grains at his door, with the 
prayer : " Oin to all the Visvaderas, to the universal [jods, 
men, beasts, birds, reptiles, etc." After death comes the 
most important rite of all, called " Araddha," which 
is offering the pinda or ball of rice, accompanied with 
prayers and libations to the departed spirit. The 
participation in this rice is accepted as evidence of 
kinship, and gives a title to a share of the deceased's 
property. 
The most ancient written account of the cultivation 
and trade in rice, as far as I have been able to ascer- 
tain, may be found in the Shoo-King or Chinese classics, 
translated in Medhursfs Ancient China, which des- 
cribes the drainage and irrigation works constructed by 
the Emperor Yu, on the Yaugtse river, about 2356 B. C, 
a few years before the date usually given to the 
Noachian deluge. It describes the mode of collecting 
revenue from the paddy lands, as follows : — " To the 
distance of 500 le (140 miles) from the Royal City was 
the land of feudal tenure ; for the first 100 le (28 miles), 
the revenue consists of the entire plant of the grain ; 
for the second 100 le, they had to pay the grain and 
half the straw ; for the third 100 le, they had to bring 
the grain in the ear, while all these rendered feudal 
service ; for the fourth 100 le, they paid the grain in 
the husk, and for the fifth 100 le, they brought the 
rice cleaned." 
A most ingenious mode of collecting the revenue 
where the cost of carriage is so great, and the roads so 
bad, as they are in China to the present day. 
Coming nearer home, rice may certainly take its 
place among the cereals cultivated in Ancient Egypt 
and Syria. Pliny, the naturalist, does not give it in 
his list of Egyptian plants, but Wilkinson considers 
there is abundant reason for supposing it was cultivated 
in the Delta. This is confirmed by illustrations taken 
from a tomb at Thebes, some 3000 B. C. Wilkinson 
supposes that it represents the pulverizing of certain 
.substances in a mortar, if it be compared with the 
process of rice cleaning as carried on in China at the 
present day, there can be no doubt but that it represents 
the same process as it was practised in Ancient 
Egypt nearly 5000 years ago. It is done by pounding 
the rice in wooden or stone pots, with a pointed pestle 
or beater ; the pot is kept full of grain, so that the 
skin is removed by the continued trituration and 
friction of one grain against another, without piU- 
Tcrizing or breaking them. Another process is 
worked by the foot, which is the method preferred 
in Burma, Japan, and parts of China. The operation 
is referred to in Proverbs xxvii, 22 : " Though thou 
shouldst bray a fool in a mortar among wheat (grain ?) 
with a pestle, yet will not his folly depart from him," 
or as the same idea is rendered in one of oiir own 
proverbs, "Folly is more than skin deep." There is 
no sense in the translation as given in the authorized 
version. The word translated "wheat" means 
literally " pounded grain," and, undoubtedly, refers 
to the decorticating process, which, according to Pliny 
and Herodotus, was applied to rice and barley but 
not to wheat. 
Pliny's description of the rice plant seems to show, 
ihoiigli )jc knew the gi ain, be had never seen it actually 
growing, the description is so wide from the mark. 
In his treatise on tlie food plants of India he says : 
" il5ut the most favorite food of all these is rice, from 
which they prepare ptisau (pearled grain) similar to 
that prepared from barley in other parts of the 
world. The leaves of rice are fleshy, very like those 
of the leek, but broader; the stem is'a cubit (18 inches) 
high, the blossom purple, and root globular, like a 
pearl in shape " (B. 18, cap. l.^S). He goes on to say 
that " Hippocrates, one of tlie famous writers of 
medical science, has devoted a whole volume to the 
praises of 'ptisan,' the mode of preparing which is 
universally known." 
The cultivation of the plant in Europe was, accord- 
ing to Captain Baird Smith, introduced by the Moors 
into Spain in the eleventh century, and from thence 
into Italy a century later. Gibbon considers that it 
was cultivated in Spain before the Christian era, and 
that the rice was imported from Spain which was 
used for making the wedding cake in the simple con- 
farreation ceremonies of the old Roman Republic. 
Be this as it may, it is certain that it was not culti- 
vated to any large extent in Italy until quite modern 
times. 
Rice cultivation has always been heavily taxed, and 
in some of the states absolutely prohibited, owing to 
the malaria rising from the swampy lands. Since 
Italy became a kingdom and legislation on the subject 
has become more uniform and less capricious, the 
cultivation of this, the most profitable crop to the 
farmer, has so extended in the rice meadows of Lom- 
bardy and other similarly situated low Ij-ing lands 
that ' the Italian rice crop of 1880 amounted to no 
less than 500,000 tons, and it is annually increasing in 
amount. The cultivation of rice in Georgia and 
Carolina, which have produced the finest seeds in the 
world, only commenced about the year 1790. 
In a pamphlet published in London, in 1701, on 
" The Importance of British Plantations in America," 
it is mentioned as a recent circumstance, that "a 
brigantine from t! e island of Madagascar hapf ened to 
put into Charleston, having a little rice seed left, 
which the captain gave to a gentleman named Wood- 
ward. From part of this he had a very good crop, but 
he was ignorant for some years how to clean it. It 
was soon dispersed over the province, and by frequent 
experiments and observations they found out ways of 
producing and manufacturing it to so great perfection 
that it is thought to exceed any other in value." Mr. 
Dubois, the treasurer of the East India Company, 
sent a further supply of seed a few years aftei'ward. 
By careful selection of the seed, and cultivation in 
trenches on a suitable soil, the Carolina seed has 
become so famous that it has been exported to Java, 
Italj', Madras, and other countries. The finest Indian 
varieties are grown from American seed. 
Since the American war and the abolition of sla^'ery, 
as the free negroes object to working in the swampy 
rice lands, associated as they are with fever and 
malaria, rice cultivation is becoming less each year, 
and the export trade of Carolina rice to Europe in 
spite of all attempts to bolster it up with protective 
duties, has practically ceased. The American millers 
are losers rather than gainers by the duty imposed for 
protecting the trade, which is now two and one-half 
cents per pound, or over 100 per cent, ad valorem on 
imported cleaned rice, thus causing the American 
consumer to pay double for his rice. As the crop 
raised is smaller every year, he has not only no rice to 
export, but must import the balance of his supply 
from the English, or other markets. Were the duty 
removed, the more expensive Carolina rice would 
again be largely exported to Europe, and be replaced 
by a still greater import of Burmese rice for the 
American home trade, to the benefit of cultivators, 
millers, shippers, and all concerned ; a remarkable 
instance of injury done to a trade by the duties intended 
to protect it. 
It is difficult to trace the time when rice was first 
imported into great Britain. Shakespeare mentions 
it as a great luxury. The clown in Winter's Tale 
says: — "Three pounds of sugar, five pounds of cur- 
rants, rice ; what will this sister of mine do with rice ? 
But my father hath made her mistress of the feast, 
and she lays it on." The supply then came from Italy. 
It was superseded early in the eighteenth century by 
rice from our American colonies and India. We did 
not begin to mill rice for ourselves to any appreciable 
extent until the early part of the present century 
