ice in France appears to have succeeded
perfectly. A piece of ground of 100 hectares in extent (250 acres) was
sown with rice last year in the lands of Arcachon, near Bordeaux, and
the crop proved a highly satisfactory one. The seed is sown about the
middle of April, and almost immediately appears above ground.

Rice may be kept a very long period in the rough--I believe a
lifetime. After being cleaned, if it be prime rice, and well milled,
it will keep a long time in this climate; only when about to be used
(if old) it requires more careful washing to get rid of the must,
which accumulates upon it. Some planters--the writer among the
number--prefer for table use rice a year old to the new. The grain is
superior to any other provisions in this respect. If a laborer in the
gold diggings, or elsewhere, takes with him two days' or a week's
provisions, in rice, and his wallet happens to get wet, he has only to
open it to the sun and air, and he will find it soon dries, and is not
at all injured for his purpose. Rough rice may remain under water
twenty-four hours without injury, if dried soon after.

Passing eastward, rice begins to be found cultivated in Egypt, becomes
more general in Northern India, and holds undisputed rule in the
peninsulas of India, in China, Japan, and the East India
islands--shares it in the west coast of Africa with maize, which, on
the other hand, is the exclusively cultivated corn plant of the
greatest part of tropical America, with only some unimportant
exceptions. On the coast of Africa rice ripens in three months; they
put it under water when cut, where it keeps sound and good for some
time.

Rice is now the staple commodity of Bourbon, and it produces about
26,000 quintals annually. It forms, together with maize and mandioc,
the principal article of food amongst the negroes and colored people.

_The Bhull rice lands of Lower Sind_.--Like all large rivers which
flow through an alluvial soil, for a very lengthened course, the Indus
has a tendency to throw up patches of alluvial deposit at its mouth;
and these are in Sind called _bhulls_, and are in general very
valuable for the cultivation of the red rice of the country. These
_bhulls_ are large tracts of very muddy swampy land, almost on a level
with the sea, and exposed equally to be flooded both by it and the
fresh water; indeed on this depends much of the value of the soil, as
a _bhull_ which is not at certain times well covered with salt