1 Dec., 1901.] QUEENSLAND AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 565 
There are many bores in Queensland which furnish ample supplies of 
excellent water for irrigation purposes, and it would be well if some persons 
owning land near a bore were to experiment with a small plot of irrigated 
rice. ‘There is no reason why this State should not grow all the rice required 
for local consumption. The land, the climate, and the water are all here. 
The industry has passed the experimental stage, and has been proved to pay 
better than wheat. Farmers should take the advice given by the American 
Grocer: “ Young man, if you want to eat your ownrice, go to the land of wells, 
canals, rice plants, and plenty.” 
RICE AS A FOOD. 
The following remarks on rice as a food are very appropriate, seeing 
that the cultivation of rice is steadily spreading in this State. The article is 
taken by the Louisiana Planter from the Crowley Signal, and will bear repro- 
duction in this Journal, as will also some ‘Rice Notes” from the former 
source :— 
There can be but little doubt but what the shortage in the Western 
potato crop is doing more, just at present, in bringing rice and its virtues 
before the North and Kast than any and all advertising could have done. The 
big Northern dailies are now taking the matter up, and a general discussion of 
the virtues of rice as compared with wheat and other cereals is being indulged in. 
Rice has one great drawback, and were it not for that there is not the 
slightest doubt but what it could easily stand any test with other cereals as a 
food. People know little about rice. Unlike wheat, corn, barley, &c., which 
have been milled, tested, and served in every imaginable way known to the 
culinary art, never until this year was any movement or effort made to display 
the true value of rice, and to-day over half the people of the United States 
do not know of more, than one way of preparing it for the table. One year ago 
if the assertion had been made that rice would perhaps some day become a 
rival of wheat and corn, it would have been considered absurd. But rice is fast 
reaching that point. The secret of the mammoth consumption and popularity 
of wheat in this country is due partially to the manner in which it has been 
placed on the market for the use of the people. Enter the average grocery 
store to-day in search of a breakfast food, and you will find wheat put up in at 
least a half-dozen different styles ready to be served after a few moments’ 
cooking. Rice can be put up in the same manner, cooked just as quickly, is 
more nutritious, and just as cheap. 
ae should learn to use rice. The trouble with consumption is but one 
thing—the lack of intelligence as to how to cook it ; and when this becomes 
known from one end of the country to the other, rice will then prove a rival— 
and a strong one, too—of its western competitors. 
RICE NOTES. 
Mr. Miron Abbott, one of the largest rice planters in the State and largely 
interested in the immense system of irrigating canals now threading south-west 
Louisiana, has been having an interview in Crowley with the editor of the Rice 
Belt News, in which Mr. Abbott expressed his belief that the rice crop of 
Arcadia parish will turn out larger than has been generally believed. He 
believes that a large part of the crop will show up a yield of 10 to 12 sacks 
er acre, and says that rice now being threshed is yielding 15 sacks per acre. 
Mr. Abbott referred to the reported exhaustion of some rice lands, perhaps 
from too severe cropping, and says they can be quickly redeemed and rejuven- 
ated, a year or two of rest doing the business. 
The rice kitchen at Buffalo continues to be a drawing card, and Louisiana 
is well known as a rice-producing State, the good things served in the rice 
