“I have planted it the two past years with a view to private consumption only; not, however, with the success of my neighbours, who are famous, and have the things under their own management.  They make from forty to fifty, and some, sixty bushels to the acre, on fine land that produces ordinarily from ten to fifteen bushels of Indian corn or maize.  It is a larger grain than the gold or swamp rice, and very white; hence it is commonly called here the ’white rice.’  It is planted generally about the middle of March, or 1st of April, in small ridges two-and-a-half feet apart, in chops at intervals of about eighteen inches, on the top of the ridge, ten or twelve seeds in each chop.  A season that will make Indian corn, will, if long enough, make this rice; but it requires about four or five weeks more than the corn to mature.  It ought to be cut before quite ripe, as it threshes off very easily, and is liable to great waste.  Instead of the flail, we take the sheaf in the hand, and whip it across a bench in a close room until the rice leaves the straw.  It does not stand the pestle as well as the swamp rice, but breaks a good deal in the beating; this, however, I have heard attributed to the dry culture.”

A new variety of rice is mentioned as having been discovered in South Carolina, in 1838, called the big-grained rice.  It has been proved to be unusually productive.  One gentleman, in 1840, planted not quite half an acre with this seed, which yielded forty-nine and a half bushels of clean winnowed rice.  In 1842, he planted 400 acres, and in 1843, he sowed his whole crop with this seed.  His first parcel when milled, was eighty barrels, and netted half a dollar per cwt. over the primest rice sold on the same day.  Another gentleman also planted two fields in 1839, which yielded seventy-three bushels per acre.  The average crop before from the same fields of fifteen and ten acres, had only been thirty-three bushels per acre.

The following were the returns of produce on some of the leading estates of South Carolina, in 1848:—­

-----------------+----------+-----------+---------+----

--------+----------
| Barrels  |           |         |            |
| Shipped  |  Barrels  |         |Average Net |Net Income
Plantation   |__________|    of     |         |  Produce   |  Amount
|Whole|Half|600 lbs.net| Weight  |per barrel. | Dollars
-----------------+-----+----+-----------+---------+---------

---+----------
1.  Prospect Hill |1,387| 10 | 1,4951/2    |  897,166|16 08-100ths|  24,001
2.  Springfield   |  737|  5 |   8011/2    |  480,937|16 60-100ths|  13,264
3.  Brook Green   |1,571| 15 | 1,716     |1,026,405|16 53-100ths|  28,261
4.  Longwood      |1,113|  4 | 1,2271/2    |  736,413|15 53-100ths|  19,021
5.  Alderly       |  484|  6 |   533     |  319,912|16 68-100ths|   8,851
-----------------+-----+----+-----------+---------+---------

---+----------
Total         |5,292| 40 | 5,7731/2 |3,460,833|            |  93,398
-----------------+-----+----+-----------+---------+------------+----------

Nos. 2 and 3 were sown with long grain rice, the others with small grain.  These plantations were all on the river Waccamaw.  The expenses of a well supplied rice plantation may be stated at 33-1/3 per cent. on the net income.