Rice nourishes more human beings than all the other seeds together, used as food; and it is by many considered the most nutritive of all sorts of grain. A very ridiculous prejudice has existed with respect to rice, namely, that it is prejudicial to the sight, by causing diseases of the eye; but no authority can warrant this assertion: on the contrary, the opinion of the ablest men (Cullen’s Mat. Med. v. i. p. 229) may be quoted in favour of rice being a very healthy food: and the experience of all Asia and America may be adduced with sufficient weight to have answered this objection, if it had been supported by any thing more than vulgar prejudice, unsupported by facts. This grain is peculiarly calculated to diminish the evils of a scanty harvest, an inconvenience which must occasionally affect all countries, particularly those which are very populous. It is the most fitted of all food to be of use in relieving general distress in a bad season[2], because it comes from a part of the world where provisions are cheap and abundant; it is light, easy of carriage, keeps well for a long time, and contains a great deal of wholesome food within a small compass. Indeed, it has been ascertained that one part of rice contains as much food and useful nourishment as six of wheat. Footnote 2: Reports of the Society for bettering the Condition of the Poor, Vol. I. p. 137. Next to the _cerealia_, the seeds of _leguminous plants_ may be regarded as substitutes for bread corn. Their ripe seeds afford the greatest quantity of alimentary matter. Their meal has a sweetish taste, but they cannot be made into light and porous bread, without the addition of a portion of wheaten flour. Their meal, however, though it forms but a coarse and indifferent bread, neither very palatable nor very digestible, except by the most robust stomachs, is yet highly nutritive. It is remarked by Dr. Cullen, that “on certain farms of this country, upon which the leguminous seeds are produced in great abundance, the labouring servants are much fed upon that kind of grain; but if such servants are removed to a farm upon which the _leguminous seeds_ are not in such plenty, and therefore they are fed with the _cerealia_, they soon find a decay of strength; and it is common for servants, in making such removals, to insist on their being provided daily, or weekly, with a certain quantity of the leguminous meal.” We are not, however, to conclude from this observation, that pease-meal bread, is really more nutritive than wheaten bread, or than the meal of the other _cerealia_. We are rather disposed to regard it as an example of the effect of habit. The _leguminous seeds_ employed in the fabrication of bread, are Pease _Pisum Sativum._ Beans _Vicia faba._ Kidney Beans _Phaseolus vulgaris._