SOWING RICE IN CHINA.

You have already heard of some of the customs of the Chinese; and as you have just read about English ploughing for growing corn, I will tell you something now about the way in which the Chinese grow rice.

You all know what rice is-for although we do not grow any rice in England yet we eat a great deal of it. Every little boy and girl in England we hope knows what good rice pudding is.

Rice comes from distant countries and is brought to England in ships. Here let me point out to my little reader the kind and merciful arrangements of Him who made the world and all things that are therein, and how wonderfully he has provided for the supply of the wants of all his creatures. The food

that is best for us always grows in the greatest abundance. In our own country, a single grain of wheat will produce 400-fold and often more-that is, one grain will produce 400 grains. How surprising! And so it is with rice, which in the Eastern parts of the world is the food of hundreds of millions, and being very light, is just the sort of food that is best suited for them in such hot climates.

The picture at the head of this represents a Chinese ploughman engaged in harrowing in the rice-seed upon ground covered with water.

The immense population of China, and the large supply of food so many require, have occasioned great attention to be paid to the cultivation of the ground, and agriculture is carried to a very great degree of perfection. The land is cultivated without intermission, and the practice of fallowing the ground is never used. Even the steepest hills are brought into cultivation, and watered by artificial means. From the importance of this branch of industry to the Chinese, the government of China confers great honour on agriculture. It is said that, on the fifteenth day of the first moon, in every year, the emperor repairs, in great state, to a certain field, accompanied by the great men of his court-his princes and principal officers. When he arrives at the field, he first touches the ground nine times with his head, in honour of Tien, the god of heaven; he next offers a prayer for the blessing of his labours and those of his people; then he sacrifices a bullock to heaven, as the fountain of all good. Whilst the sacrifice is offered on the altar, a plough, drawn by a pair of oxen, highly ornamented, is brought, when the emperor lays aside his grand robes, lays hold of the handle of the plough, and opens several furrows in different parts of the field. The principal mandarins then take the plough and do the same, and thus set an example of industry to the empire at large. This festival closes with the

distribution of clothes and money to the peasantry or poor people. It is further stated that the emperor. comes, in a similar manner, to sow the seed.

The system of agriculture pursued in China is very different to that adopted in this part of the world. The principal grain grown in a great part of that country, is rice; and this requires a very different mode of cultivation to our corn. The chief difference is, that rice requires, during the greater part of its growth, to be covered with water. A great deal therefore depends on what is called irrigation, that is, the conveying of water by means of small channels to every part of the land where rice is intended to be grown. The land has to be covered with water before the seed is sown, to convert the soil into a kind of mud, and then withdrawn so as to allow it partially to dry. After being lightly ploughed and harrowed, the seed is sown very thickly, and the land again thinly covered with water. Sometimes this ploughing and harrowing is carried on under water. This will explain the literal sense of many passages of scripture, where reference is made to sowing the seed in water. In Numbers it is said (xxiv. 7.) "His seed shall be in many waters;" and in Isaiah (xxxii. 20) "Blessed are ye that sow beside all waters," and see Eccl. xi. When the plants grow to the height of six or seven inches, they are taken up, by passing a kind of thin share under their fine roots, and removed, together with the soil, in the form of small flags, and transplanted in a field previously prepared, leaving about a foot every way between each plant. It is said the Chinese labourers sometimes make a kind of game of this operation. According to the description given of it in the Chinese Encyclopædia, they have to keep time in their planting with the strokes of a gong, which another beats. The merriment of the play lies in this, that each of the planters endeavours by jests and comic stories to baffle the other. After this trans

planting, the water is again let on the field, and continues there till the rice begins to ripen, when it is let off, so that by the time the rice is fully ripe the field is quite dry. The ripeness of the rice is indicated, like that of wheat, by its turning of a golden hue, and is reaped with a hook similar to a reaping hook.

The necessity of keeping the rice so much under water furnishes almost constant labour to the Chinese husbandman during its growth. The seasons too, unlike ours, are divided into wet and dry. When the wet season is past, the Chinese farmer must not expect successive showers to fertilize his land, he must furnish all the water his land requires by irrigation. This is not so difficult when his rice fields lie near a river; but where no such convenience is at hand, he has to preserve a sufficient supply of water in a reservoir. From thence it is poured on the land by means of buckets, or by a simple and ingenious kind of chain pump. There are several kinds of rice, one of which is so hardy that it will grow on the Himalaya mountains, at the very edge of the snow that covers their top. The Chinese have a species of mountain rice, which they cultivate in a similar way to our barley. It is planted at the commencement of the rainy, and reaped at the beginning of the dry season. They have also another kind—aquatic, or water rice, which is grown on lakes, by means of rafts made of bamboo covered with earth.

Now, is it not curious and interesting to read of the various ways in which food is raised out of the earth? In one view the curse is thus turned into a blessing; for men must work, or starve. Now, if they had not to work for their food, we fear that many would be more idle, and careless, and wicked, than they are. But having to work, they are kept out of mischief,—

"For satan finds some mischief still

For idle hands to do."

WISHING FOR SPRING.

Oн for the beautiful spring,
Oh for its genial showers,
Oh for the honey-bee's music,

Oh for the balmy wild flowers;
I long for a stroll in the woodlands,
'Mong the trees in their green robes arrayed,
I long for a swing on their branches,
I long to recline 'neath their shade.

Oh for its fresh breezy morning,
Oh for its bright sunny noon,
Oh for its rosy-hued sunset,
Oh for its soft silver moon;
I want to be down in the valley,
To roam by the musical stream;
How often I've listened its babble,

While the hours passed away like a dream.

Oh for the incense-fraught zephyr,
Oh for the cloudless blue skies,
Oh for the young birds' sweet warbling,
And the wild deers' beautiful eyes;

I want to be carelessly straying

Through meadows, and woodlands, and bowers,

I want to be hearing sweet music,

I want to make garlands of flowers.

Oh for the pale dewy primrose,

Oh for the lilac's sweet dyes,

For the cowslip that bends its head meekly,
To look in the violet's blue eyes;

Then, come, oh thou beautiful spring,
And breathe on our languishing bowers,

On the wandering gale thy sweet odours fling,Come with music, and sunlight, and flowers! Leicester.

R. W.