s also continually
increasing. These results have been obtained by the attention paid to
the proper irrigation of the soil fit for this culture; and to the
hydraulic works which the Government executes on its own account in
the parts of the island where rice fields can be established, and
where they are required to feed a population whose number is still
increasing yearly.

I have seen, continues Mr. Crawfurd, lands which have produced, from
time beyond the memory of any living person, two yearly crops of rice.
When this practice is pursued, it is always the five-months grain
which is grown. The rapid growth of this variety, has, indeed, enabled
the Javanese husbandman, in a few happy situations, to urge the
culture to the amount of six crops in two years and a half. Rice
cultivated in a virgin soil, where the wood has been burnt off, will,
under favorable circumstances, give a return of twenty-five and thirty
fold. Of mountain rice, cultivated in ordinary upland arable lands,
fifteen fold may be looked upon as a good return. In fertile soils,
when one crop only is taken in the year, marsh rice will yield a
return of twenty-five seeds. When a double crop is taken, not more
than fifteen or sixteen can be expected. In the fine province of Kadu,
an English acre of good land, yielding annually one green crop and a
crop of rice, was found to produce of the latter 641 lbs. of clean
grain. In the light sandy, but well watered lands of the province of
Mataram, where it is the common practice to exact two crops of rice
yearly without any fallow, an acre was found to yield no more than 285
lbs. of clean rice, or an annual produce of 570 lbs. --("History of
the Indian Archipelago.")

The low estimation of Java rice is not attributable to any real
inferiority in the grain, but to the mode of preparing it for the
market. In husking it, it is, for the want of proper machinery, much
broken, and, from carelessness in drying, subject to decay from the
attack of insects and worms. When in the progress of improvement more
intelligent methods are pursued in preparing the grain for the market,
it will equal the grain of any other country. Machinery must be
employed for husking the grain, and some degree of kiln drying will be
necessary to ensure its preservation in a long voyage.

I know nowhere that rice is so cheap as in Java, except in Siam,
whence it is exported at one-third less cost. A great deal of rice is
exported from Siam to C