LETTER CLXXXVII.—TO M. DE MALESHERBES, March 11, 1789
TO M. DE MALESHERBES.
Sir,
Paris, March 11, 1789.
Your zeal to promote the general good of mankind, by an interchange of useful things, and particularly in the line of agriculture, and the weight which your rank and station would give to your interposition, induce me to ask it, for the purpose of obtaining one of the species of rice which grows in Cochin-China on high lands, and which needs no other watering than the ordinary rains. The sun and soil of Carolina are sufficiently powerful to insure the success of this plant, and Monsieur de Poivre gives such an account of its quality, as might induce the Carolinians to introduce it instead of the kind they now possess, which, requiring the whole country to be laid under water during a certain season of the year, sweeps off numbers of the inhabitants annually, with pestilential fevers. If you would be so good as to interest yourself in the procuring for me some seeds of the dry rice of Cochin-China, you would render the most precious service to my countrymen, on whose behalf I take the liberty of asking your interposition: very happy, at the same time, to have found such an occasion of repeating to you the homage of those sentiments of respect and esteem, with which I have the honor to be, Sir, your most obedient and most humble servant,
Th: Jefferson.