frequently produce a crop of wheat during the winter, and the cotton is often sown before the wheat is harvested. While grow. ing, cotton is carefully tended, thinned, hoed, and weeded, until the flowers begin to appear about August. As soon as the pods begin to ripen and burst, the cultivator collects them before they fall, and carries them to his house to clean the cotton of seeds and husks. The weather is carefully watched, for a dry summer or a wet autumn are alike unpropitious, and as the pods are ripening from August to October, it is not uncommon for the crop to be partially lost. The seeds are separated by a wheel turning two rollers, and the cotton sold by each farmer to merchants in the towns. Some he keeps for weaving at home, and spinning-wheels and looms are common articles of furniture in the houses of the peasantry around Shanghai.*

Hemp is cultivated in the provinces north of the Mei ling, but the plant also grows in Fuhkien; the grasscloth made from it is not so much used for common dresses as cotton and silk. There are three plants which produce a fibre made into cloth known under this name, viz. the Cannabis sativa or hemp at Canton, the Urtica nivea, a species of nettle grown about Suchau, and the Sida tiliafolia near Tientsinfu. The coloring matter used for dyeing blue is derived from two species of plants, the Polygonum tinctorium at the south, and the tien tsing or Isatis indigotica, cultivated at Shanghai and Chusan. The mulberry is sometimes raised merely as a shade and fruit tree, but the great consumption of the leaves renders its culture an important branch of labor in Chehkiang and all the eastern provinces. The tree is, by some growers, allowed to attain its natural height, by others it is cut down to increase the branches and the produce of leaves. In Chehkiang, it is cut in January, and deprived of its useless branches, leaving only the outer ones, which are trimmed into two or three points, in order to force the plant to extend itself. The trees are set out in rows twelve feet or more apart, each tree being half that distance from its neighbor, and opposite the intervals in the parallel rows; the interspaces are occupied with legumes or greens. The trees are propagated by seed and by suckers, but soon lose their vigor from being constantly stripped of leaves, and are then rooted up and replaced by new nurslings.

* Fortune's Wanderings, Chap. xiv.

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Sugar is grown to a great extent in the south and south-eastern provinces; the name ché, by which it is known, is an original character, which favors the opinion that the plant is indigenous in China, and the same argument is applicable to wheat, hemp, mulberry, tea, and some of the common fruits, as the plum, pear, and orange. The stalks are pressed in machines, and the juice boiled to sugar; or the cane is hawked about the streets for consumption by the people. The sugar mill consists merely of two upright cylinders, between which the cane is introduced as they turn, and the juice received into reservoirs; it is then boiled down, and sent to the refiners to undergo the necessary processes to fit it for market.

Many plants are cultivated for their oil, to be used in the arts as well as cooking; a strong oil is derived from the seeds of two or three plants belonging to the Euphorbiaceous family, for mixing with paint, smearing boats, &c. It is deleterious when taken into the system, but does not appear to injure those who use or express it. The tallow tree (Stillingia sebifera) occurs over all the eastern part of China, and when fully grown is a beautiful tree, resembling the aspen in its shape and foliage; it would form a valuable addition to the list of shade trees in this country. The seeds grow in clusters like ivy berries, and are collected in November; when ripe, the capsule divides, and falling off discovers two or three kernels covered with the pure white tallow. When the tallow is to be prepared, these are picked from the stalks and put into an open wooden cylinder with a perforated bottom, in which they are well steamed over boiling water. In ten or fifteen minutes, the tallow covering the seeds becomes soft, and they are then thrown into a stone mortar and gently beaten with mallets to detach it. The whole is then sifted on a hot sieve, by which the tallow is separated from the kernels, though containing the brown skin which envelops the latter, and presenting a dirty appearance. The tallow in this state is inclosed in a straw cylinder, or laid upon layers of straw held together by iron hoops, and subjected to pressure in a rude press from which it runs clear in a semifluid state, and soon hardens into cakes. The candles made from it become soft in hot weather, and are sometimes coated by dipping them in colored wax.*

• Fortune's Wanderings, p. 78.

The departments of floriculture and arboriculture have received great attention from the Chinese gardeners, but their efforts are directed to producing something curious or grotesque, rather than improving the quality of their fruits, or enlarging the number of their flowers. A common mode of multiplying specimens is to slit up the stem, and insert half of it in a piece of damp earth tied around the stalk until it has rooted, and then cutting off the whole. Dwarfing trees or forcing them to grow in grotesque shapes, employs much of their time and patience. The juniper, cypress, pine, elm, bamboo, peach, plum, and flowering-almond, are selected for this purpose, the former being trained into the shape of deer and other animals, pagodas, &c., with extraordinary fidelity, the eyes, tongue, or other parts being added to complete the resemblance. The principle of the operation depends upon retarding the circulation of the sap by stinting the supply of water, confining the roots, and bending the branches into the desired form when young and pliable, afterwards retaining them in their forced position in pots, and clipping off all the vigorous shoots, until, as in the case of the cramped feet of women, nature gives up the contest, and yields to art. These, like the similar exhibitions in sculpture and painting, indicate the uncultivated taste of people, who admire the fantastic and monstrous more than the natural. Some of the clumps placed in large earthen vases, consisting of bamboos, flowers, and dwarf trees growing closely together upon a piece of rockwork, and overshadowing the water in the vase, in which gold fish swim through the crevices of the stone, are beautiful specimens of Chinese art.

The annual ceremony of ploughing is of very ancient origin. At Peking, it consists in ploughing a sacred field with a highly ornamented plough kept for the purpose, the emperor holding it while turning over three furrows, the princes five, and the high ministers nine. These furrows were, however, so short that the monarchs of the present dynasty altered the ancient rule, ploughing four furrows and returning again over the ground. The ceremony finished, the emperor and his ministers repair to the terrace, and remain till the whole field has been ploughed. The ground belongs to the temples of Heaven and Earth on the south of the city, and the crop of wheat is used in idolatrous services. The rank of the actors renders the ceremony more imposing at Peking, and the people of the capital make more of

ANNUAL CEREMONY OF PLOUGHING.

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it than they do in the provinces. A monstrous clay image of a· cow is carried to the spot, containing or accompanied by hundreds of little similar images; after the field is ploughed it is broken up, and the pieces and small images are carried off by the crowd to scatter the powder on their own fields, in the hope of thereby insuring a good crop.

The heads of the provincial governments, the prefects and district magistrates, go through a similar ceremony on the same day. In Ningpo, an eye-witness describes the principal features. of the ceremony as consisting in a solemn worship by all the local officers of a clay image of a buffalo and an idol of a cowherd. The prefect then ploughed a small piece of ground, and he and his associates dispersed till the morrow, when they came together in another temple at dawn. Here a series of prostrations and recitals of prayers were performed by the "fathers of the people" in their presence, some of whom seemed to have no respect for the worship they were engaged in, while others evinced deep reverence. As soon as this was over, the clay ox was brought out, and a procession consisting of all the officers passed around it repeatedly, striking the body at a given signal, and concluding the ceremony by a heavy blow on the head. The crowd then rushed in and tore the effigy to pieces, each one carrying off a portion to strew on his fields.*

The various modes of catching and rearing fish exhibit the contrivance and skill of the Chinese quite as much as their agricultural operations. According to the Repository, at least one tenth of the population derive their food from the water, and necessity leads them to invent and try many ingenious ways of securing the finny tribes. Nets are woven of hempen thread, and boiled in a solution of gambier to preserve them from rotting. The smacks which swarm along the coast go out in pairs, partly that the crews may afford mutual relief and protection, but chiefly to join in dragging the net fastened to their boats. In the shallows of rivers, rows of heavy posts are driven down, and nets secured to them, which are examined and changed at every tide. Those who attend these nets, moreover, attach scoops or drag-nets to their boats, so loaded that they will sink and gather

* Penal Code, pp. 94-106, 526. Chinese Repository, Vol. II., p. 350; Vol. III., pp. 121, 231; Vol. V., p. 485. La Chine Ouverte, p. 346. Foreign Missionary Chronicle, Vol. XIII., p. 296.

the sole, ray, and other fish feeding near the bottom. Liftingnets, 20 feet square, are suspended from poles elevated and depressed by a hawser worked by a windlass on shore; the nets are baited with the whites of eggs spread on the meshes.

The fishermen along the coast form an industrious, though rather turbulent community, by no means confining their enterprises to their professed business when piracy, dacoity, or ma rauding on shore hold out greater prospects of gain. When their boats become unseaworthy, they are still considered landworthy, and are occasionally transformed into houses by setting them bodily upon a stone foundation above the reach of the tide, or breaking them up to use the boards and spars in constructing rude huts.

Cormorants are trained in great numbers in the eastern provinces to capture fish, and are sometimes under such good order that they will disperse at a given signal, and return with their