Part 2

The attention of the Emperors and Mandarins to the cultivation of the land is so great, that when deputies arrive at court from the Vice-Roys, the Chinese monarch never forgets to demand in what condition the fields appeared to them; and the falling of a seasonable shower furnishes a proper occasion for visiting a Mandarin, to compliment him thereupon.--Every year, in spring, which falls in February, the Emperor (according to the ancient custom) goes himself, in a solemn manner, to plough a few ridges of land, in order to animate the husbandmen by his own example; and the Mandarins of every city perform the ceremony, which is as follows--The tribunal of Mathematics having, pursuant to orders, fixed on the twenty-fourth of the second moon, as the proper day for the ceremony of tillage, that of the Rites gave notice to the present Emperor _Yong-Ching_, by a memorial which set forth the following particulars to be observed by him, preparatory to this festival.--1st. That he should appoint 12 illustrious persons to attend and plough after him, viz. three princes, and nine presidents of the sovereign courts; or the assistants of the latter, in case they were too old, or infirm.--2nd. That as this ceremony does not solely consist in the Emperor's ploughing the earth, in order to stir up emulation by his own example; but also includes a sacrifice, which he, as Chief Pontiff, offers to _Shang-ti_, to procure plenty from him in favour of the people; therefore by way of preparation, he ought to fast and observe continence the three preceding days; the Princes and Mandarins, who accompany his Majesty, ought to prepare themselves in the same manner.--3rd. That on the eve of the ceremony, his Majesty is to send several Lords of the first quality to the Hall of his ancestors, to prostrate themselves before their Tablet, and give them notice, as though they were yet living, that the next day he will offer the great sacrifice.

Besides these directions to the Emperor, the tribunal likewise prescribes the preparations to be made by the different tribunals; one is obliged to prepare the sacrifice; another to compose the formula; another to carry and set up the tents, under which his Majesty is to dine, in case he so orders it; a fourth is to assemble forty or fifty husbandmen, venerable for their age, who are to be present when the Emperor ploughs the ground, with forty of the younger sort to make ready the ploughs, yoke the oxen, and prepare the grain that is to be sown; consisting of five sorts, supposed to comprehend all the rest, as wheat, rice, beans, and two kinds of millet.

On the twenty-fourth day of the moon, the Emperor went with his whole court, in his habit of ceremony, to the place appointed, to offer to _Shang-ti_ the spring sacrifice; by which he is implored to increase and preserve the fruits of the earth. The place is a little hillock made of earth, a few furlongs south from the city; on the side of this elevation, which ought to be fifty feet four inches high, is the spot which is to be ploughed by the Imperial hands.

After the Emperor had offered sacrifices, he descended with the three Princes and nine Presidents, who were to plough with him. Several great Lords carried the valuable chests, which contained the grains that were to be sown. All the court attended with profound silence; then the Emperor took the plough and tilled the ground several times backwards and forwards; when he quitted it a prince of the blood held it and ploughed; as did all the rest in their turns. After having ploughed in several places, the Emperor sowed the different grain; and the day following, the Husbandmen by profession, (forty-four of them old and forty-two of them young) finished the remainder of the field that was left untilled. The ceremony concluded with the appointed reward, which the Emperor bestowed upon each of them; consisting of four pieces of dyed cotton to make cloths.

The Governor of _Pe-King_ goes often to visit this field, which is cultivated with great care; and examines all the ridges thoroughly, to see if he can meet with any uncommon ears, such as they reckon good omens; on which occasion he gives notice, that he found a stalk, for instance, that bore thirteen ears. In the autumn the same governor gets in the grain in yellow sacks; which are stowed in a granary built for that purpose, called the _Imperial Magazine_. This grain is kept for the most solemn ceremonies; for when the Emperor sacrifices to _Tyen_, or _Shang-ti_, he offers it as the fruit of his own hands; and on certain days in the year, he presents it to his ancestors, as if they were still living.

Among several good regulations made by the same Emperor, he has shown an uncommon regard for the Husbandmen. To encourage them in their labour, he has ordered the governors of all the cities to send him notice every year, of the person of this profession, in their respective districts, who is most remarkable for his application to agriculture; for unblemished reputation; for preserving union in his own family, and peace with his neighbours; for his frugality and aversion to extravagance. Upon the report of the governor, the Emperor will advance this wise and diligent Husbandman to the degree of a Mandarin of the eighth order, and send him patents of an ordinary Mandarin; which distinction will entitle him to wear the habit of a Mandarin, to visit the governor of the city, to sit in his presence, and drink tea with him. He will be respected all the rest of his days.--After his death he will have funeral obsequies suitable to his degree; and his title of honour shall be written in the hall of his ancestors. What emulation must such a reward excite among the Husbandmen!

Accordingly we find that they are continually busied about their lands if they have any time to spare, they go immediately to the mountains to cut wood; to the garden to look to their herbs, or to cut canes, &c. so that they are never idle. The land in China never lies fallow. Generally the same ground produces three crops in a year; first rice; and before it is reaped they sow fitches; and when they are in, wheat, beans, or some other grain: thus it goes continually round. They very seldom employ their land for unprofitable uses, such as flower gardens, or fine walks; believing useful things more for the public good, and their own.

The attention of husbandmen is chiefly employed in the cultivation of rice. They manure their land extremely well; gathering for that purpose, with extraordinary care, all sorts of ordure, both of men and animals, or truck for it wood, herbs, or linseed oil. This kind of manure, which elsewhere would burn up the plants, is very proper for the lands of China; where they have an art of tempering it with water before they use it. They gather the dung in pails, which they commonly carry covered on their shoulders; and this contributes very much to the cleanness of their cities, whose filth is thus taken away every day.

In the province of _Che-Kyang_, and other places, where they sow rice, they use balls of hog's, or even human hair; which, according to them, gives strength to the land, and makes that grain grow better. For this reason, Barbers save the hair which they cut off the heads, and sell for about a halfpenny a pound to such people, who carry it away in bags; and you may often see barks loaded with it. When the plant begins to ear, if the land be watered with spring water, they mix quicklime with it; saying that it kills worms and insects, destroys weeds, and gives a warmth to the ground, which contributes much to fertility. By this means the rice fields are so clean, that Navarette, sometimes, walked through them, looking for some small herb; and could never find any; so that he concludes, the rice which is surprisingly tall and fine, draws all the nourishment from the ground.

The husbandmen sow their grain at first without any order; but when it has shot about a foot, or a foot and a half high, they pluck it up by the roots; and making it into a sort of small sheaves, plant it by a line, and checkerwise; to the end, that ears, resting upon each other, may stand more firmly, and resist the winds.--But, before the rice is transplanted, they level the land, and make it very smooth, after the following manner. Having ploughed the ground three or four times successively, always to the ancles in water, they break the clods with the head of their mattocks; then, by the help of a wooden machine (on which a man stands upright, and guides the buffalo that draws it) they smooth the earth, that the water may be every where of an equal height; insomuch that the plains seem more like vast gardens than open fields.

The mountains in China are all cultivated; but one sees neither hedges nor ditches, nor scarce any tree; so fearful they are of loosing an inch of ground. It is very agreeable to behold, in some places, plains three or four leagues in length, surrounded with hills and mountains, cut from bottom to top, into terraces three or four feet high, and rising one above another, sometimes to the number of twenty or thirty. These mountains are not generally rocky, as those in Europe, the soil being light and porous, and so easy to be cut in several provinces, that one may dig three or four hundred feet without meeting with the rock. When the mountains are rocky, the Chinese loosen the stones, and make little walls of them to support the terraces; they then level the good soil and sow it with grain.

They are still more industrious.--Though in some provinces, there be barren and uncultivated mountains, yet the valleys and fields which separate them in a vast number of places, are very fruitful and well cultivated. The husbandman first levels all the unequal places that are capable of culture. He then divides that part of the land, which is on the same level, into plots; and that along the edges of the valleys, which is unequal, into stories, in form of an amphitheatre: and as the rice will not thrive without water, they make reservoirs, at proper distances, and different heights, to catch the rain and the water which descends from the mountains, in order to distribute it equally among their rice plots; either by letting it run down from the reservoir to the plots below, or causing it to ascend from the lower reservoir to the highest stories.

For this purpose they make use of certain hydraulic engines, which are very simple, both as to their make and the manner of playing them. It is composed of a chain made of wood, resembling a chaplet or pair of beads, strung as it were with a great number of flat boards, six or seven inches square, and placed parallel at equal distances. This chain passes through a square tube or gutter: at the lower end whereof is a smooth cylinder or barrel, whose axis is fixed in the two sides: and to the upper end is fastened a sort of drum, set round with little boards to answer those of the chain, which passes round both it and the cylinder; so that when the drum is turned, the chain turns also; and, consequently, the lower end of the gutter or tube being put into the water, and the drum-end set to the height where the water is to be conveyed, the boards filling exactly the cavity of the tube, must carry up a continual stream so long as the machine is in motion; which is performed in three ways:--1st. With the hand, by means of one or two handles applied to the ends of the axis of the drum.--2nd. With the feet, by means of certain large wooden pegs, about half a foot long, set round the axle-tree of the drum for that purpose.--These pegs have long heads, rounded on the outside, for applying the soles of the naked feet; so that one or more men, may with the greatest ease put the engine in motion, either standing or sitting; their hands being employed all the while, the one holding an umbrella, and the other a fan.--3rd. By the assistance of a buffalo, or some other animal made fast to a great wheel, about four yards in diameter, placed horizontally. Round its circumference are fixed a great number of pegs or teeth; which tallying exactly with those in the axle-tree of the drum, turn the machine with a great deal of ease.

When a canal is to be cleansed, which often happens,--it is divided, at convenient distances, by dikes; and every neighbouring village, being allotted its share, the peasants immediately appear with their chain-engines; whereby the water is conveyed from one to the other. This labour, though painful, is soon ended, by means of the multitudes of hands. In some parts, as the province of _Fo-Kyen_, the mountains, though not very high, are contiguous, and with scarce any valleys between; yet they are all cultivated by the art which the husbandmen have to convey the water from one to the other through pipes made of bamboo.

To this surprizing industry of the husbandmen, is owing that great plenty of grain and herbs, that reigns in China above all other regions. Notwithstanding which, the land hardly suffices to support its inhabitants; and one may venture to say, that to live comfortably they have need of a country as large again.

REMARKS ON SALT AS A MANURE.

The progress of agriculture has been, and no doubt will continue to be, proportionate to the advancement of the science of chymistry; and the absolute necessity of calling in the aid of this science to that of agriculture, will be perfectly evident, when we reflect, that whenever any substance is applied to the soil, it becomes very frequently changed into new matter by combination or decomposition.--When a handful of salt is thrown upon some soils, its nature is in a very short time changed, and it becomes a new substance, which may be useful or injurious to vegetation, according to the change which it has undergone. Hence originates the great diversity of opinion, relative to the use of salt as a manure, a subject which the science of chymistry would set at rest, after a few simple experiments, but which the practice of agriculture would never determine without the knowledge of the effect of the soil, on the salt. There are also other considerations which materially affect the value in which this article is held as a manure. The farmers in Cornwall, in England, use the salt in which fish has been cured, by which the salt has already been partially changed, by combining it with the ammonia of the fish, which is one of the most powerful fertilizers known to chymical science. The practice also of using sea sand, in the same shire, is attended with effects which are as much owing to the use of the sand as the salt.--The astonishing effect produced by the urine of cattle, in Flanders, is no evidence in favour of salt, [as the urine contains twelve or thirteen fertilizing saline substances, besides salt] but it is a very powerful one in favour of compound saline manures. Salt is used in one of the preparations for the Patent Plaster, or Fertilizing Compost, but it is in that case combined with quicklime, and its eventual product is the muriate of lime and soda, both of which, when combined with other substances, are powerful fertilizers.

It appears to be a provision of nature, that the muriate of soda, or common salt, should be a neutral substance with respect to fertilizing the soil. For if it possessed any degree of fertilizing powers, its effect would be seen on our sea-coasts; and its utility, by this time, would have been decisively proved by experiment as well as accident. That salt is partially beneficial to some soils, is beyond a doubt; but whether the benefit is equivalent to the expense of using it, is a question which can only be determined by the nature of the soil.--Wherever lime is used as a manure, salt may be beneficially applied, or when combined with any fertilizing substance which has a tendency to decompose it, but in this case the fertilizing power is owing to the new product, and not to the muriate of soda.

[_Morn. Chron._

THE LOCUST TREE.

A writer in the Long Island Star, highly recommends the cultivation of the Locust Tree, as a profitable business. He says the price of this timber is about seventy-five cents per cubic foot--that 200 trees will grow on an acre of land--or 20,000 trees to a hundred acres, which may average 20 feet per tree, which would give the enormous sum of $300,000. But suppose they amount to only $100,000, as the nett profits from 100 acres, in what way can the landholder expect so great a profit in 30 years, with the same probability of success, as from this? He mentions, that the timber, the seeds of which were planted by one man in England, was sold for 60,000_l._ sterling.

The locust becomes valuable in 15 years after planting, and in 25 or 30 years of full growth. It is easily raised by planting 15 or 20 trees to the acre; and as soon as the roots have spread, running a plough through the ground, and when it cuts the roots, new shoots will spring up.

This tree also invites the grass to grow under it, and the shade does not materially injure it; and while grass in the field is burnt up by the scorching rays of the sun, the locust grove will yield a rich and luxuriant pasture.

From Baldwin's London Magazine.

MEMOIRS OF RICHARD L. EDGEWORTH, Esq.[1]

[1] Memoirs of the late R. L. Edgeworth, Esq. begun by himself, and finished by his Daughter, Maria Edgeworth. 2 vols. London, 1820.

The first volume contains such part of the memoirs of Mr Edgeworth as was written by himself, and is of a very different complexion from the second from the pen of his daughter. We see in every page of the former, evidence of that abundance of animal spirits, and healthy activity of body and mind, which often changed their channel of direction in the course of his life, without ever relaxing their innate spring, or losing any of their pristine force of impulse. It is indeed Mr. Edgeworth's boast, corroborated by his daughter's testimony, that he was unchanged by age, or events.--He seems to have had a ready and quick feeling for every thing that happened, just as the bulrush has a rapid sympathy with the breeze that passes over it, and raises its head exactly into its old position the instant it is gone by. Mr. Edgeworth began to marry at twenty, and continued the practice till late in life. In fact, matrimony and mechanics seem to have monopolized his fidelity: with dancing he was desperately enamoured at first, but his taste soon tired of it, though he is careful to assure us his legs never did. Gambling and dissipated companions possessed him for a time, but neither sullied his mind, nor permanently influenced his habits. Telegraphs and one-wheeled chaises, however, kept stronger hold of him: he was the first to send poetry across the channel by a chain of signals; and he contrived for himself a carriage in which his "_legs were warned to lift themselves up_," to escape being broken by posts, and in which he sat "_pretty safe_ from wet," his feet being "secured by leathers which folded up like the sides of bellows."

One of his exploits in this commodious vehicle, he records in a tone of exultation with which we entirely sympathize:--

"On my road to Birmingham, I passed through Long-Compton, in Warwickshire, on a Sunday. The people were returning from church, and numbers stopped to gaze at me. There is or was a shallow ford near the town, over which there was a very narrow bridge for horse and foot passengers, but not sufficiently wide for wagons or chaises. Towards this bridge I drove. The people, not perceiving the structure of my one-wheeled vehicle, called to me with great eagerness to warn me, that the bridge was too narrow for carriages. I had an excellent horse, which went so fast as to give but little time for examination. The louder they called, the faster I drove, and when I had passed the bridge, they shouted after me with surprise. I got on to Shipton upon Stour; but, before I had dined there, I found that my fame had overtaken me. My carriage was put into a coach-house, so that those who came from Long-Compton, not seeing it, did not recognize me; I therefore had an opportunity of hearing all the exaggerations and strange conjectures, which were made by those who related my passage over the narrow bridge. There were posts on the bridge, to prevent, as I suppose, more than one horseman from passing at once. Some of the spectators asserted, that my carriage had gone over these posts; others said that it had not _wheels_, which was indeed literally true; but they meant to say that it was without any wheel. Some were sure that no carriage ever went so fast; and all agreed, that at the end of the bridge, where the floods had laid the road for some way under water, my carriage swam on the surface of the water."

Mr. Edgeworth was also, about the commencement of his career in mechanics, lucky enough to contrive a wheel which "should carry on a man _as fast as he could possibly walk_," that is to say, provided he "_plied his legs with energy_." On the first experiment being made, it answered its purpose so well as to give the lad within scarcely time "_to jump from his rolling prison before it reached the chalk-pit_; but the wheel went on with such velocity as to outstrip its pursuers, and rolling over the edge of the precipice it was dashed to pieces."

To recompense himself for this misfortune, he invented "_a sailing carriage_."

"The carriage was light, steady, and ran with amazing velocity. One day when I was preparing for a sail in it, with my friend and schoolfellow, Mr. William Foster, my wheel-boat escaped from its moorings, just as we were going to step on board. With the utmost difficulty I overtook it, and as I saw three or four stage coaches on the road, and feared that this sailing chariot might frighten their horses, I, at the hazard of my life, got into my carriage while it was under full sail, and then, at a favourable part of the road, I used the means I had of guiding it easily out of the way. But the sense of the mischief which must have ensued, if I had not succeeded in getting into the machine at the proper place, and stopping it at the right moment was so strong, as to deter me from trying any more experiments on this carriage in such a dangerous place. Such should never be attempted except on a large common, _at a distance from a high road_. It may not however be amiss to suggest, that upon a large extent of iron rail-way, in an open country, carriages properly constructed, might make profitable voyages from time to time with sails instead of horses; for though a constant or regular intercourse could not be thus carried on, yet goods of a certain sort, that are saleable at any time, might be stored till wind and weather were favourable."

One more of Mr. Edgeworth's ingenious inventions is all we can allow to this subject:--he offered for a wager to produce a _wooden horse that should carry him safely over the highest wall in the country_!