Untitled

290
EAST ASIA.
to which the field is appropriated.
In the districts where rice and cotton are the
staple products these crops often extend in unbroken breadth over tracts of
thousands of acres. The peas, and wheat, and indigo, and turnips, and bringalls
lie in patches round the villages. The ground is not only clean, but the soil is so
exquisitely pulverised that after a week's rain the traveller will sometimes look
about in vain for a clod to throw into a pond to startle the water-fowl.*
Pasture lands are as scarce as the forests in China. The land is too valuable
to be devoted to stock-breeding, for a tract required to support
would yield cereals and vegetables enough for 12,000,000 human beings.
a million oxen
But for
thousands of years both the ox and horse have been domesticated. The mythical
Emperor Fo-hi, said to have flourished fifty- three centuries ago, is supposed to have
been the first to domesticate the six essentially tame animals horse, ox, pig, dog,
sheep, and fowls. But the larger animals, including the buffalo, are little used
except for carriage. They are carefully tended, protected from the cold with
warm cloths, and from the rough roads with straw shoes. Owing to the Buddhist
'
precept and his natural attachment to his companion in labour, the peasant eats
the flesh of these animals with great reluctance. The penal code even forbids their
slaughter without express permission. Nevertheless, apart
from the numerous
vegetarian societies, which also abstain from wine, garlic, and onions, the Chinese
add a little meat to their ordinary diet. They are partial especially to the flesh of
the hog, of which there are several varieties. On the rivers and reservoirs flocks
of three or four thousand ducks are also met, which are looked after either by
children in boats, or even by 'cocks, which are taught to keep them together by
crowing and flapping their wings. A large traffic is done in these water-fowl,
which are dried, like botanical specimens, between two boards, and in this state
forwarded to the most distant provinces. In the southern provinces, and
especially in Hunan, a particular breed of dogs, and even rats and mice, are
prepared in the same way. The locust, silkworm, and snake enter into the diet of
the poor, while sharks' fins and swallows' nests are served on the tables of the rich.
Another delicacy consists of ducks' eggs steeped while fresh in a solution of salt and
lime. Penetrating through the shell, the lime turns the contents quite black, and
imparts to the egg a decided flavour. In this state it is encased in clay
and baked,
after which it will keep for a long time, the white being reduced to the consistency
of a jelly, while the yolk becomes about as firm as a hard-boiled egg. After the
death of Commissioner Yeh in Calcutta, where 'he had been detained a State
prisoner, several large boxes of eggs prepared in this way were found amongst his
effects.
The Chinese have discovered a means of increasing the fecundity of their
poultry, whereby the relative production of eggs is much greater than in Europe.
The hen is prevented from hatching by being taught to bathe, and artificial
incubation has been practised long before the art was known in the West. Pigeons
are protected from birds of prey by means of a bamboo whistle no thicker than -a
sheet of paper inserted between the wings. Marvellous devices have been intro-
" China in 1857-8," p. 247.