RICE (

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• GREEK
• GREEK, ETRUSCAN AND

Greek 6p6 a, Latin oryza,

See also:

• FRENCH
• FRENCH, DANIEL CHESTER (1850– )
• FRENCH, NICHOLAS (1604-1678)

French riz,

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• ITALIAN

Italian riso,

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• SPANISH

Spanish arroz, derived from the Arabic)  ,• a well-known cereal, botanical name Oryza saliva . According to Roxburgh, the great Indian botanist, the cultivated rice with all its numerous varieties has originated from a wild plant, called in India Newaree or Nivara, which is indigenous on the borders of lakes in the Circars and elsewhere in India, and is also native in tropical Australia . The rice plant is an annual grass with long linear glabrous leaves, each provided with a long sharply pointed -ligule . The spikelets are borne on a compound or branched spike, erect at first but afterwards bent downwards . Each spikelet contains a solitary flower with two outer small barren glumes, above which is a large tough, compressed, often awned, flowering glume, which partly encloses the somewhat similar pale . Within these are six stamens, a hairy ovary surmounted by two feathery styles which ripens into the fruit (grain), and which is invested by the husk formed by the persistent glume and pale . The cultivated varieties are extremely numerous, some kinds being adapted for marshy land, others Rice (Oryza saliva). for growth on the hill- sides . The cultivators A, spikelet (enlarged) ; B, bearded variety make two principal C, spikelet of B (enlarged). divisions according as the sorts - are early or late . Rice has been cultivated from time immemorial in tropical countries . According to Stanislas Julien a ceremonial ordinance was established in China by the emperor Chin-nung 2800 years B.C., in accordance with which the emperor sows the rice himself while the seeds of four other kinds may be sown by the princes of his family . This fact, joined to other considerations, induced Alphonse de Candolle to consider rice as a native of China . It was very early cultivated in India, in some parts of which country, as in tropical Australia, it is, as we have seen, indigenous .

It is not mentioned in the

Bible, but its culture is alluded to in the Talmud . There is proof of its culture in the Euphrates valley and in Syria four hundred years before Christ . Crawfurd, on philological grounds, considers that rice was introduced into Persia from southern India . The Arabs carried the plant into Spain . Rice was first cultivated in Italy near Pisa in 1468 . It was not introduced into S . Carolina until 1700, and then, it is said, by accident, although at one time the southern United States furnished a large proportion of the rice introduced into commerce . Rice sports into far more varieties than any of the corns familiar to Europeans; for some varieties grow in the water and some on dry land; some come to maturity in three months, while others take four and six months to do so . A very full account of the cultivation of rice in India will be found in Sir George Watt's Dictionary of the Economic Products of India . Rice constitutes one of the most important articles of food in all tropical and subtropical countries, and is one of the most prolific of all crops . The rice yields best on low lands subject to occasional inundations, and thus enriched by alluvial deposits . An abundantrainfall during the growing season is also a desideratum .

Rice is sown broadcast, and in some districts is transplanted after a fort-

night or three weeks . No special rotation is followed: indeed the soil best suited for rice is ill adapted for any other crop . In some cases little manure is employed, but in others abundance of manure is used . No special tillage is required, but weeding and irrigation are requisite . Rice in the husk is known as " paddy . On cutting across a grain of rice and examining it under the microscope, first the flattened and dried cells of the husk are seen, and then one or two layers of cells elongated in a direction parallel to the length of the seed, which contain the gluten or nitrogenous matter . Within these, and forming by far the largest part of the seed, are large polygonal cells filled with very numerous and very minute angular starch grains . Rice is not so valuable as a food as some other cereals, inasmuch as the proportion of nitrogenous matter (gluten) is less . Payen gives only 7% of gluten in rice as compared with 22 % in the finest wheat, 14 in oats and 12 in maize . The percentage of potash in the ash is as i8 to 23 in wheat . The fatty matter is also less in proportion than in other cereals . Rice, therefore, is chiefly a farinaceous food, and requires to be combined with fatty and nitrogenous substances, such as milk or meat gravy, to satisfy the requirements of the system .

- A large proportion of the rice brought to

Europe is used for starch-making, and some is taken by' distillers of alcohol . Rice is also .the source of a drinking spirit in India, known as arrack, and the national beverage of apan—sake—is prepared from the grain by means of an organic ferment .