74 
CULTIVATION OF RICE. 
and good; whereas, without the addition of rice, 
14 pounds of flour will only make 18 pounds of 
bread. Like other kinds of grain, rice adapts it¬ 
self to the soil and climate, and particular mode of 
cultivation; but if the seed be net changed, or se¬ 
lected from the best specimens of the plant, it will 
ultimately degenerate. Thus in Piedmont, after 
a long series of years, the rice became so much af¬ 
fected with a kind of blight called the brusone , as 
to compel the Piedmontese to import fresh seed 
in 1829, from South Carolina. When Mr. Jeffer¬ 
son visited Piedmont in 1787, the exportation of 
seed-rice or rice in the husk was punished with 
death. The American rice introduced into Pied¬ 
mont escaped the brusone , but it was some years 
before it adapted itself to the soil and climate. 
Some years ago, a French traveller by the name 
of Poivre, finding rice growing in great perfection 
on the mountains and high lands of Asia, particu¬ 
larly Cochin China, named it “ riz sec ” or dry rice, 
and sent the seed to Europe, where many experi¬ 
ments were made with it. It yielded no better 
than any other kind of rice, and was found like all 
others to succeed best when inundated. The reason 
why it yielded so much more in Asia than in Eu¬ 
rope, can be readily accounted for, by the natural 
inundations it received from the excessive rains 
during the monsoons. 
The discovery of a dry or upland species of rice 
was for a long time a desideratum to the European 
agriculturist; because both France and Spain in¬ 
terdicted the cultivation by inundation on account 
of its supposed insalubrity. But no variety has 
been discovered which yields as much out of the 
water as it does in it. There are many localities 
in the United States, where the culture of rice by 
the irrigating system, would rather serve to make 
the surrounding neighborhoods healthy instead of 
sickly. It is generally admitted, that a given sur¬ 
face of ground completely inundated, is much less 
unhealthy than the same surface partially inunda¬ 
ted, or in transitu between the wet and the dry 
state. Hence, mill-ponds which partially dry up 
in the summer, are fruitful sources of disease. 
Some of the best rice is said to grow on the bottom 
of mill-ponds. Nothing more is necessary, than to 
make the bottom of the mill-pond perfectly level, 
and then to overflow the whole surface just deep 
enough to keep the top leaves above water. As 
if to show, that unhealthfulness is not necessarily 
connected with tfie culture of this valuable grain, 
nature has imposed a law upon it, ordering that it 
should flourish better when overflowed with pure 
running water than with the stagnant waters of 
impure lakes and marshes. If the mathematician 
with his leveling instrument were called to the aid 
of the agriculturist, it would be a very easy matter, 
in many localities, to mark out the course and re¬ 
quired depth of those drains, which would give 
motion to stagnant waters, and convert many un¬ 
healthy and impenetrable bogs and marshes into 
fruitful rice-fields. 
fa The progress of agriculture is very much impe¬ 
ded by error and confusion in names, which can 
never be corrected until the Botanist comes to its 
aid. Thus, on the Rhine I met with a species of 
spring-wheat, the triticum monococcum, cultivated 
under the name of riz sec or dry rice. This kind 
of wheat is particularly adapted to cold, mountain¬ 
ous regions, with a poor silicious soil, and well de¬ 
serves the attention of the American people, not as 
rice, but as wheat. In Alsace it is called “ epeau- 
tre de mars ,” or rather, “ la petite epeautre ,” to dis¬ 
tinguish it from the triticum amyleum. There are 
two kinds of rice, which are said to succeed best 
on uplands; the long and the round. The former 
has a red chaff, and is very difficult to beat. The 
latter shakes out, if not cut as soon as ripe. They 
nevertheless succeed best under the inundation 
system of culture. In the eastern hemisphere, rice 
is cultivated as far north as the 46th degree of 
latitude. The climate of the United States is bet¬ 
ter suited to it than that of Europe, because our 
summers are hotter. In the northern parts of 
China the variety called the imperial rice, or riz 
sec de la Chine (the oriza sativa mutica ), is more 
precocious than any other, is said to yield a heavy 
harvest, and to constitute the principal food for the 
people of that populous region. But it has succeed¬ 
ed no better in Europe than any other kind of rice. 
The best rice-lands of South Carolina are valued 
at five hundred dollars per acre, while the best 
cotton-lands sell for a tenth part of that sum, 
proving that rice is more profitable than cotton. 
The profits of a crop should not so much be esti¬ 
mated by the yield per acre, as the number of acres 
a laborer can till. After the land is properly pre¬ 
pared for inundation, by levelling, ditching, and 
embankments, a single individual can grow almost 
an indefinite quantity of rice. Rice is no doubt 
ultimately destined to supersede cotton in a large 
portion of Mississippi and Louisiana. There is a 
body of the richest alluvial land in the world, lying 
in the southern part of this county, Adams, and 
the adjoining county of Wilkinson, not forty miles 
from Natchez, containing upward of one hundred 
thousand acres; many entire sections of it, at this 
very day, belonging to the United States govern¬ 
ment, and subject to entry, and the balance, inclu¬ 
ding the improvements, not valued at more than 
from ten to fifty dollars per acre, which at very 
little expense could be converted into the most 
productive rice estates. There is a large lake, 
called Old River, of some twenty miles in length 
by a mile in width, forming the boundary between 
Adams and Wilkinson counties. This lake, by an 
embankment two hundred yards in length, could 
be cut off entirely from the Mississippi river, and 
would serve as a reservoir to receive the water 
from the rice plantations, while the waters of the 
Homochitta river could be made, at all times, to 
overflow the rice-fields. On the coast, near New 
Orleans, the water of the Mississippi itself is con¬ 
ducted through ditches to overflow the rice-grounds. 
But as the banks have only a very gentle slope 
backward, the water has to be conducted a mile oi 
more, unless the river be very full, before it arrives 
at land sufficiently low to inundate. Farther 
backward the swamps set in; thus limiting the 
rice lands to a narrow strip behind the cotton and 
sugar-lands, and in front of the swamps. But in 
the region of country just referred to, the Homo¬ 
chitta river coming down from the hills could be 
made to overflow the Mississippi bottoms up to 
