half a century, has been considered as the most profitable in existence. It requires to be sown on land in a good state of cultivation; when the grains will be found large, plump, and firm. The straw of the potatooat is also of excellent quality. It is the variety most generally cultivated in the north of England, and in the lower districts of Scotland.

The seed time of oats is almost universally in March and April. The grain is scattered broadcast, in the large proportion of from four to six bushels to the acre,-the medium produce of which is from forty to fifty bushels.

The nutritive quality of oats is less, in a given weight, than that of any other cereal grains. In oats of the best quality, it does not exceed 75 per cent.; while that of wheat is 95 per cent. The very small proportion of saccharine matter ready formed in oats, renders it both difficult and unprofitable to convert this grain into malt. Brewers, at the present day, therefore, do not employ oats in the preparation of any kind of beer. In former times, when the public taste was different from what it is at present, a drink called mum was manufactured for sale, and, in the preparation of this liquid, oatmeal was employed.

There is a kind of weed, called the wild-oat, indigenous to this country, which, though it resembles the cultivated species in form, differs from it altogether in its qualities. Its seed is exceedingly tenacious of life, and will remain buried under the soil for a century or more, without losing its vegetating power. Such a property in seeds, as I observed in the Winter volume, is very far from being uncommon.

Before leaving the subject of the corn plants cultivated in our own latitudes, let us reflect for a moment on this bountiful provision of Creative wisdom. Here are various species of vegetable productions, placed by some mysterious agency in the power of man, and depending entirely on him for their propagation, which are admirably adapted, each to its own variety of cli

mate, and each of which possesses useful properties peculiar to itself, but all containing a copious supply of nutriment, grateful and salubrious to himself, and to the various animals which he rears for domestic purposes. In a grain of corn, at one end of a groove, is a small protuberance, which is the germ or embryo of the future plant. This organ has been appropriately called corculum, or little heart. It contains within itself a principle, which, by being placed in the earth, and subjected to the influence of the seasons, evolves first a sprout, then a stalk with leaves and joints, and then, on the top of all, exposed in the most favourable manner to the action of the sun and air, a number of seeds, the whole of which productions, both in their early and mature state, are fit for the food of useful quadrupeds, while the seeds contain a farina admirably adapted for the nutriment of the human species.

Look, again, at the manner in which this important gift is propagated. It produces not only a plant, with its farinaceous seed; but, yielding a 'ready return to human industry and skill, it affords plants after plants, and seeds after seeds, in such abundance, that, in the course of a few harvests, the progeny of a single little germ might be rendered capable of feeding a nation. "Thus it is," says the author of the articles on Vegetable Substances, in the Library of Entertaining Knowledge, "that in the lapse of ages, amidst the desolations of rude conquerors,* and the alternations which the

* There is something very striking in the fact, that while conquest carries extermination over the face of the earth, it is also one of the frequent means employed by Providence for diffusing the blessing of useful plants among rude nations, as well as various other comforts of civilized society. Connected with this subject, it is exceedingly affecting to think that the value of decaying organized substances, as manure, may perhaps first have been taught to a savage people, by observing the effects produced by this process on a field of battle. This idea has been suggested by the following observations of an amiable and talented traveller, on the field of Waterloo. "As I looked over this field, now green with growing corn, I could mark with my eye spots where the most desperate carnage had been, pointed out by the verdure of the wheat. This touching memorial, which endures when the thousand groans have expired, and when the stain of human blood has faded from the ground, still seems to cry to heaven that there is awful guilt

finest portions of the earth have endured, from civilization to semi-barbarism, the vital principle of vegetable life, destined for the chief support of the human race, has not been lost; and it has remained to man, like fire, which he alone has subjected to his use, to be called forth at his bidding to administer to his support, his comfort, and his advancement, in every art of social existence."*

ELEVENTH WEEK_WEDNESDAY.

THE CORN-PLANTS.-RICE, MAIZE, AND Millet.

IN approaching the tropical regions, all the kinds of grain already treated of gradually disappear, and rice, maize, and millet, are cultivated in their place. These plants are obviously formed for occupying, with wholesome food, each in its own peculiar region, the extensive plains and rising grounds of the equatorial portions of the globe, the rice affecting the low swampy lands on the banks of the rivers and streams,—the maize also requiring moisture, but in a much smaller proportion,— and the millet being an inhabitant of light sandy soils, exposed, without mitigation, to the scorching rays of

the sun.

Of rice itself, indeed, there are varieties, which almost render it fit for any state of moisture. The common and the early rice, are both marsh plants, but the mountain rice thrives on the slopes of hills and in other situations where it can receive humidity only occasionally, and the clammy rice appears to be endowed with the peculiar property of growing both on wet and somewhere, and a terrific reckoning for those who had caused destruction which the earth would not conceal. These hillocks of superabundant vegetation, as the wind rustled through the corn, seemed the most affecting monuments which Nature could devise, and gave a melancholy animation to the plain of death."-" Essays Descriptive and Moral, by an American." * Vegetable Substances, p. 40.

on dry grounds. The species chiefly cultivated, however, requires much moisture; and in almost all parts of the world where it is raised, the practice of irrigation has been adopted.

Rice is a panicled grass, bearing, when in ear, a nearer resemblance to barley than to any other of the corn plants grown in England. The seed grows on separate footstalks, springing from the stem. Each grain is terminated by an awn or beard, and inclosed in a rough yellow husk, the whole forming a spiked panicle. The stalk is not unlike that of wheat, but the joints are

more numerous.

The farina of rice is almost entirely composed of starch, having little or no gluten, and being without any ready formed saccharine matter. On account of this difference of composition, it is believed to be much less nutritious than the corn plants already described.

There is little reason for doubting that this grain is of Asiatic origin. From the earliest records, it has formed the principal, if not almost the only food of the great mass of the population on the continent, and in the islands of India, and throughout the Chinese empire. The introduction of it into America, where it is now so extensively cultivated, is of recent date. It is said, that about the end of the century before last, a brigantine from the Island of Madagascar happened to put in at Carolina, having a little seed rice, which the Captain gave to a gentleman of the name of Woodward. This he sowed; and as it was productive, it soon became dispersed over the province. It is reported also, that Mr Dubois, treasurer of the East India Company, about the same time, sent a small bag of rice-seed to that country; and from these two parcels, it is supposed, that the two kinds, the red and the white, now raised in America, took their rise.

The swamps of South Carolina, both those which are occasioned by the periodical visitings of the tides, and those which are caused by the inland floodings of the

rivers, are found to be well suited to the production of rice; and not only is the cultivation accomplished with little labour, but the grain proves of a remarkably fine quality. It is, in that part of the American States, extensively cultivated for exportation.

In some parts of Europe, and, in particular, on the rich meadows of Lombardy, which can be irrigated by the waters of the Po, and in the Province of Valencia, in Spain, where there are similar facilities, rice is successfully cultivated; but the effects of the flooding is found in Lombardy to be so detrimental to health, that the goverment has thought it necessary to restrict this profitable species of agriculture within certain limits.

Although rice be exceedingly prolific, it has been remarked, that it has a tendency rather to condemn the great body of the inhabitants to poverty, than to prove a source of riches in those countries where it forms the sole article of food. The reason for this it is not difficult to discover. The people obtaining the bare means of subsistence, without laborious exertion, are destitute of those incentives to industry which so powerfully and so beneficially actuate the lower classes of the community in such countries as our own, and which infuse such life and vigour into all the various grades of society. Their native indolence restrains their activity; and in ordinary years, luxuriating in abundance, they are contented with the present, and form no schemes for the future. It is remarkable, however, that in such countries visitations of famine are both more common and more destructive than in those regions of the globe which are naturally less prolific. This is owing not merely to the want of provident habits in the inhabitants, but also to the circumstance of their entire dependance on one article of food. When a failure in their rice crop occurs, they have no other kind of sustenance to fall back upon. The misery of their condition in this respect may be readily understood, by supposing what would be the state of our own poor if they depended