bited by E.I. Heriot, was pronounced by the jury
"magnificent in size, color, and clearness," and it was awarded a
prize medal. The jury also admitted that the American rice, though
originally imported from the Old World, is now much the finest in
quality.

This grain was first introduced into Virginia by Sir William Berkeley,
in 1647, who received half a bushel of seed, from which he raised
sixteen bushels of excellent rice, most or all of which was sown the
following year. It is also stated that a Dutch brig, from Madagascar,
came to Charleston in 1694, and left about a peck of paddy (rice in
the husk), with Governor Thomas Smith, who distributed it among his
friends for cultivation. Another account of its introduction into
Carolina is, that Ashley was encouraged to send a bag of seed rice to
that province, from the crops of which sixty tons were shipped to
England in 1698. It soon after became the chief staple of the colony.
Its culture was introduced into Louisiana in 1718, by the "Company of
the West."

The present culture of rice in the United States is chiefly confined
to South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas.
The yield per acre varies from twenty to sixty bushels, weighing from
forty-five to forty-eight pounds when cleaned. Under favorable
circumstances as many as ninety bushels to an acre have been raised.

Judge Dougherty, who resides near the borders of Henderson county,
Texas, has raised a crop of several hundred bushels of upland rice.
The crop averages thirty bushels to the acre. He thinks rice can be
raised there as easily as Indian corn, and will be far more
profitable.

Another variety is cultivated in America to a limited extent, called
Cochin-China, dry, or mountain rice, from its adaptation to a dry
soil, without irrigation. It will grow several degrees further north
or south than the Carolina rice, and has been cultivated with success
in the Northern provinces of Hungary, China, Westphalia, Virginia and
Maryland; but the yield is much less than that already stated, being
only fifteen to twenty bushels to an acre. It was first introduced
into Charleston, from Canton, by John Brodly Blake, in 1772.

The American crop of rice in 1848, reached 162,058 tierces in market,
and of these 160,330 tierces were exported from South Carolina. The
largest rice crop grown in South Carolina for the past thirty years,
was in 1847, when 192,462 tierces were raised; 140,000 to 150,000