There is an ice-house in the dairy, for the purpose of supplying ice for cooling the cream which is put into the churn. This, they find, facilitates the making of butter at certain periods of the year.
In the farm-yard is an inscription, commemorating the visit paid to this dairy by the Austrian emperor and the archdukes, two years ago."
WILD RICE.
From the New York Statesman.
Extract of a letter, dated Canandaigua, July, 1820.
I saw for the first time in the Seneca river at Montezuma, the aquatic plant called wild rice, or folle arvine. It grows all over the west and north; and wherever it flourishes, myriads of waterfowl are attracted to it, and derive their chief support and exquisite flavour from its alimentary qualities. In the lakes and rivers adjoining Montezuma, thousands of wild geese and ducks of all kinds congregate at the proper season for food, except the canvas back duck, or anas valsineria of Wilson, which derives its name from a water plant called valsineria, on the roots of which it feeds, and which Wilson states to be a fresh water vegetable, that grows in some parts of the Hudson and Delaware, and in most of the rivers that fall into the Chesapeake.
Some difficulty has occurred not only about the botanical name, but also about the botanical character of the wild rice, or wild oats. The confusion of nomenclature has arisen from Linnæus himself. In his Species Plantarum, he has denominated it zezania aquatica, and in his mantisa, zezania palustris—and it has been called by other botanists, zezania claurlosa. I shall prefer the first name as most characteristic. It has been well described by Mr. Lambert, as zezania panicula inferne racemosa superne spicata. Pursh represents it as a perennial plant. Nuttall and Michaux are silent on this point, and Eaton says it is an annual, in which opinion I concur.
Mr. Lambert, in a communication in the 7th volume of the Transactions of the Linnæan Society of London, has given a figure of this plant as growing at Spring Grove, the seat of sir Joseph Banks, in England. It appears that sir Joseph received some of the seed gathered in a lake, in Canada, and put it in jars of water. It was sown in a pond at Spring Grove, where he has a great quantity of the plant, growing annually, ripening its seeds extremely well in autumn, and sowing itself round the edges.
By what I can learn, this same plant grows in Lake George, and Lake Champlain, and in all the western lakes. It produces seed in some places in September, and in others in October. It grows in shallow water, and, sometimes to the height of eight feet. Some of the western Indians derive their principal support from it. The grain it bears is superior to the common rice, and if cut before ripe, it makes excellent fodder, embracing the advantages of hay and oats. Mr. Lambert's figure of the plant in the Linnæan Transactions is accurate, and exactly resembles the one growing in the Seneca River. Its productiveness may be inferred from the food it furnishes to thousands of human beings, and to myriads of aquatic animals. From the success of the experiments of Sir Joseph Banks, it is highly probable that it will grow in any part of this country and Great Britain; and if so, may it not be considered as a good substitute for the oryza sativa, or common rice. It is well known that the latter furnishes more subsistence to the human race than any other plant. Pursh mentions a grass which he calls the oryzopsis asperifolia, which he observed on the broad mountains of this country, and which he says contains large seeds, that produce the finest flour. Perhaps this species of oryzopsis, although generally different, bears the same relation to z aquatica in its importance and place of growth, as the mountain rice of India does to the common rice of that region. At all events, the more I see of this country, the more I am convinced of its vast ability to support the human species and of the propriety of calling its latent powers into operation.