CULTURE OF RICE. 
53 
weighed 47 lbs. per bushel. Mr. Smith’s crop of this 
season, weighs 46 lbs. 
Mr. A. Stevens, of Genesee county, has raised 
this variety of oats two years. He also had an op¬ 
portunity of observing their cultivation for several 
successive years. He found that they yielded more 
per acre sown under like circumstances, than the com¬ 
mon oat; for while the former weighed 44 lbs., the 
latter, well cleaned, only weighed 32 lbs. per bushel. 
The third year, in consequence of the dryness of 
the season, Mr. Stevens observes, that the crop fell 
off' to 36 lbs., but the next season they recovered 
their original weight. He thinks they have now 
become acclimated, and that such an occurrence 
will not take place again; for in 1841, some of these 
oats were sown, no rain fell on them for six weeks, 
die summer was dry and warm, but yet the crop 
weighed 44 lbs. per bushel. 
These oats, like all other grains, should be sown 
on good soil. If it requires manure, it had better be 
applied to such a crop as is improved by bam yard 
manure; for example, com or potatoes, and then the 
oats sown the succeeding year. In cultivating them, 
the ground should be plowed as soon as possible in 
the spring, the oats sown in the plowed furrow, and 
then well harrowed in. If the intention be to seed the 
land down with grass, which has proved a good plan 
with me, then the oats should be sown first, the grass 
seed next; and after the ground is harrowed with the 
common harrow, it should be well brush-harrowed 
or rolled. 
From 2 to 3 bushels of seed should be sown to 
the acre. More or less seed according to the quality 
of the soil. Rich and well-cultivated ground requir¬ 
ing less than a poorer soil, as the oats will tiller bet¬ 
ter. Great care should be employed in harvesting 
the crop, as the grain shells very easily. The crop 
should be cut early while the berry is full and soft, 
even before all the straw has turned yellow, else a 
large quantity of the grain will be lost, and what 
you have will be darker, lighter in weight, and more 
husky. 
From the above it does not appear that these Im¬ 
perial oats degenerate, as was remarked by General 
Talmadge before the Farmers’ Club in this city. All 
those who have cultivated them, as far as I have been 
able to learn, consider them superior to any other va¬ 
riety at present raised in our country. 
New York, Jan. 1845. H. A. Field. 
CULTURE OF RICE. 
Georgia has a front upon the sea, from the Sa¬ 
vannah to the St. Mary’s, of a little more than one 
hundred geographical miles. Within that space, five 
rivers bring down and discharge the waters of the in¬ 
terior into the ocean, having at their mouths each a 
considerable portion of alluvial lands. The fresh 
waters of these rivers in their descent repel the salt 
waters of the sea, and confine them to certain limits. 
It is within this disputed empire, upon this debateable 
ground, that our most valuable plantations are situ¬ 
ated ; for man has stepped in and said to the waters 
of the sea and the rivers, this land is mine; I will 
raise dykes upon it, and bound you out; I will dig 
trenches in it, and place water-gates upon them, so 
that if the rains fall they shall flow off; but when 
drought comes I will lift my water-gates, and let you 
in *o flow my rice and my sugar cane, my cotton 
and my corn, and there will be health, and healing, 
and fertility, in your floods. 
In Georgia, there are probably thirty thousand 
acres of land, upon these five rivers, of this alluvial 
soil so situated, of which the Altamaha gives fifteen 
thousand. In South Carolina, from her greater ex¬ 
tent of coast, there must be at least fifty thousand 
acres of the same quality. Not one half of these 
lands in Georgia are yet reclaimed by being embanked 
and drained, although there is every motive in favor 
of their being so; for they are, with the lands of 
South Carolina of the same description, as far as I 
know, the best rice lands in the world ; because only 
upon these lands in these two States, do the waters, 
twice in twenty four hours, rise high enough to wa¬ 
ter them ; and twice in twenty-four hours, sink low 
enough to drain them. 
The tides do not rise and fall sufficiently in the 
Bay of Chesapeake, to water and to drain those allu¬ 
vial lands; these benefits only extend from Cape 
Fear river to the St. Mary's river. Florida has no 
river land of this description, and the Gulf of Mexico 
has no practicable tides, useful for this purpose, so 
that the lands at the mouth of the Mobile and Chat¬ 
tahoochee rivers, like the lands at the mouth of the 
Mississippi, are not reclaimable for any valuable pur¬ 
pose. 
There is no place in the United States, nor perhaps 
in the world, where any culture has been so systema¬ 
tized as the rice culture upon these lands, in these 
two southern States. In China and Hindostan, 
where the rice crop is the great crop of the country, 
rice is transplanted by hand, from the seed-bed to the 
field. This can only be done where labor is of less 
value than seed or lands. The principal motive, 
however, for this course, I conceive, is, to save water, 
as they depend upon flowing their rice lands, either 
when their rivers rise above their banks in periodical 
freshets, which is but for a short portion of the year, 
or from tanks and reservoirs, where water is kept in 
reserve, to let dow T n upon their fields once or twice in 
the season. They cannot therefore let this water off 
their rice lands, until it has given to their rice (which 
is an aquatic plant), all the benefit it is capable of 
imparting, lest they should not be able to refill their 
fields when they may require it. In Italy, probably 
from the same cause (the want of water), their rice 
lands are most carefully prepared ; they are plowed 
and harrowed, when a small portion of water is let 
on upon them; and while the soil is in a fluid state, 
the rice is sown broad cast over the field, and the 
water is never again taken off the lands, until just be¬ 
fore they are reaped. All weeding must be done in¬ 
conveniently and unhealthfully, and is done by wo¬ 
men wading in the water; yet some Italian fields after 
a crop of hemp, with this treatment, have given the 
greatest crops of rice ever produced within our know¬ 
ledge—sixty bushels of clean, or one hundred and 
twenty bushels of rough rice—yet, from our having 
a free command of water, putting it on, and taking 
it off’ as we will, our general crop of rice, say fifty 
bushels in the rough, is better than the general crop 
of rice in Italy, India, or China. But I will now 
proceed to a description of our own rice culture. 
To protect these alluvial lands as well from the 
waters of the river, when the rivers swell by abun¬ 
dant rains or the melting of snow upon our moun¬ 
tains in the spring, as from the increased rise of .the 
