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becomes altered; but the Great Wall may still be considered, generally, as the boundary that separates two peoples, one of them exclusively pastoral, and the other as exclusively tillers of the earth.*

The provincial government of Canton, in 1833, obtained the sanction of the emperor to a very sensible plan for inviting the poorest people to settle down on waste spots of land wherever they might find them, cultivating these in the best way they could for their own sole benefit, without any tax or other charge whatever. The land, thus entered on might hereafter become liable to the land-tax; but it was made the freehold property of the first cultivators, with a deed of grant from the government; and, as the object was the relief of the poor, no rich person was allowed to apply. The edict by which the foregoing regulation was promulged, observed, that "in government there is nothing so important as a sufficient supply of food for the people. If the poor people will but spend their strength on the southern lands, food and raiment will be supplied, and they will never be brought to abandonment and disgrace, nor become the associates of vagabond banditti. All those who sink down to depraved courses have been impelled to them either by hunger and cold, or by voluntary laziness. In Canton province thieves and robbers are exceedingly numerous, and they have no doubt originated in these causes. In attempting to eradicate their evil practices, the first thing is to provide them with the means of subsistence." †

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Under all the circumstances, it is very surprising that the potato should have made so little progress as an article of cultivation and food since its first introduction

*Royal Asiatic Transactions, vol. ii. 4to.

† Chinese Repository, vol. i. p. 503.

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at Canton. Nothing indeed could more convincingly demonstrate the strength of Chinese prejudices than their indifference to that, as well as to other European vegetables, as cabbages, peas, &c., which, with the potato, have been cultivated at Macao for half a century. The rice-fields near that place are, during winter, converted to the growth of kitchen vegetables, including potatoes; but these are mainly for the supply of the European and native Portuguese population. Even the shipping near Canton is supplied with potatoes from Macao, where they are sufficiently abundant and cheap; but at the former place their use is not enough extended to have reduced their price. It is probable that from climate, soil, or other causes, joined to the ancient prejudice in its favour, rice will long continue to be preferred as an object of cultivation. The labour bestowed upon it is of a more compendious nature than that devoted to the growth of kitchen vegetables, and, in the southern parts of the empire, perhaps better repaid by the produce. In the case of everything except rice, the Chinese seem to manure rather the plant itself than the soil, supplying it copiously with their liquid preparation; and the motive to this is economy, for the heavy rains wash away all the soluble parts of the earth, leaving a sterile mass of sand and stones.

Every substance convertible to manure is diligently husbanded. The cakes that remain after the expression of their vegetable oils, horns and bones reduced to powder, together with soot and ashes, and the contents of common sewers, are much used. The plaster of old kitchens, which in China have no chimneys but an opening at the top, is much valued; so that they will sometimes put new plaster on a kitchen for the sake of the old. All sorts of hair are used as manure, and barbers'

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shavings are carefully appropriated to that purpose. annual produce must be considerable, in a country where some hundred millions of heads are kept constantly shaved. Dung of all animals, but especially nightsoil, is esteemed above all others; which appears from Columella to have been the case among the Romans. Being sometimes formed into cakes, it is dried in the sun, and in this state becomes an object of sale to farmers, who dilute it previous to use. They construct large cisterns or pits lined with lime-plaster, as well as earthen tubs sunk in the ground, with straw over them to prevent evaporation, in which all kinds of vegetable and animal refuse are collected. These, being diluted with a sufficient quantity of liquid, are left to undergo the putrefactive fermentation, and then applied to the land. They correct hard water by the addition of quicklime, and are not ignorant of the uses of lime as a manure. "The Chinese husbandman," Sir George Staunton correctly observes,*"always steeps the seeds he intends to sow in liquid manure, until they swell and germination begins to appear, which experience (he says) has taught him will have the effect of hastening the growth of plants, as well as of defending them against the insects hidden in the ground in which the seeds were sown. Perhaps this method has preserved the Chinese turnips from the fly that is often fatal to their growth elsewhere. To the roots of plants and fruit-trees the Chinese farmer applies liquid manure likewise, as contributing much towards forwarding their growth and vigour." With regard to fruit-trees, they have found that the best situations for planting them are by the sides of rivers. "Few situations," observes a paper in the Horticultural Transac❝combine so many advantages for the plantation of

tions,

* Embassy, vol. ii. p. 476.

orchards or fruit-trees as low grounds that form banks of rivers. The alluvial soil, of which they are generally composed, being an intermixture of the richest and most soluble parts of the neighbouring lands, with a portion of animal and vegetable matter, affords an inexhaustible fund of nourishment for the growth of fruit-trees.” *

The sides of Chinese rivers are commonly high embankments of rich mud, thrown up as dikes for the protection of the lands which have in a great measure been gained from the river. These banks are six or eight feet in breadth at the top, five or six in height, and descend to the water at an inclination deviating about 30° from the perpendicular. The roots are in this manner fed by the water without being swamped, and the rich appearance of the fruit-cultivation along the Canton river, in oranges, plantains, and other produce, seems to attest its efficiency: at the same time, the advantages of the system may be partly frustrated by the exposure of such situations to plunder from passing boats, where there is a crowded population; and this may perhaps account in some measure for the perverse habit, which has been remarked in the Chinese, of plucking fruit before it is entirely ripe. The worst enemies of fruitcultivation near some parts of the south coast are the typhoons, which break and destroy the trees.

The highly ingenious mechanical contrivances adopted under various circumstances for the irrigation of lands have been already described in the nineteenth chapter. Occasionally a single bucket is used, attached to the extremity of a long lever, which is nearly balanced and turns upon an upright, as may be observed in some parts of our own and various other countries. Where the elevation of the bank over which water is to be lifted is * Vol. vii. p. 135.

trifling, they sometimes adopt merely the following simple method:-A light water-tight basket or bucket is held suspended on ropes between two men, who, by alternately tightening and relaxing the ropes by which they hold it between them, give a certain swinging motion to the bucket, which first fills it with water, and then empties it

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by a jerk on the higher level; the elastic spring which is in the bend of the ropes serving to diminish the labour. This mode of irrigation is represented in the preceding cut from Staunton.

The rice grown by the Chinese is of a much larger grain than that which is common in India, and consists

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