Remoteness from the sea air is said to be the reason why the up-country rice possesses less saccharine matter than that grown near the sea-coast, and among the inundation; but this appears an erroneous judgment. There is, no doubt, a great encrease of saccharine matter in plants (of the same genus) cultivated on spots well manured: now, few, if any, of the places devoted to the cultivation of rice in the upper country, receive much aid from manure; nor are they, in general, subject to the reception of nutritious particles, such as are either floated down, or are engendered and deposited by, the inundation, which may be viewed as the grand depôt of whatever can enrich the soil. When we look to the large tracts of plain, not subject to such an immense flow of feculous moisture, but seeming merely as reservoirs for the retention of local rains, we shall then see, that the superior sweetness of the rice produced about Backergunge, Dacca, Hajygunge, Luricool, Mahomedpore, Comercolly, Jessore, &c., is to be attributed solely to the superior fatness of the soil, on which the most luxuriant crops of cotton, and of esculents, are raised during the dry season. When the soil is fresh turned up for the second crop, it is generally very offensive, and, doubtless, by no means favorable to the health of the cultivators, who, at that season, (commonly in November, December, and January,) are subjected to very obstinate agues.
Rice is very subject to the weevil, which often multiplies among it so fast, as to threaten destruction to the whole depôt. The natives have recourse to a very simple preventive; viz. by placing one or two live cray-fish within the heap: their effluvia quickly expel the predatory tribe. Here we have a question for naturalists and philosophers; a question pregnant with interest to the agricultural world, namely, ‘Whether there is any particular, and what, property in a live cray-fish, that produces this effect upon insects under such circumstances?’ Whatever may be the cause, the effect is well known; therefore the enquiry is so far forwarded as to furnish data, or at least hints, respecting those results which might be expected both from marine productions, and from other living bodies. The inhabitants of the lower provinces are chiefly Hindus; therefore, owing to religious tenets, by which they are led to consider almost every animal as unclean, few experiments could be expected to take place among them; otherwise, we might probably have found that any living animal, such as a rat, a frog, &c., if confined in a small box, and placed within a heap of rice infested by weevils, would produce a similar effect. Rice is by no means subject to this species of depredation when in the coat, that is, in the state called _d’haun_, but the natives are averse to retaining it in that form, because the grains shrink considerably, and, when beat out for sale, do not occupy so much space as when exposed to the air. Hence, it is an object with the rice-merchants to dispose of their crops before the month of March, unless the markets may be so glutted as to cause that grain to sell, as it has in some years done, at such low prices as could not fail to ruin the farmer. It has been known so cheap as seven and eight maunds (equal to seven cwt.) for a rupee! When this happens, such merchants as have the command of money rarely fail to make immense fortunes. Many have been known to possess four or five lacs of maunds!