The fuel grown on the farms consists of the stems of all agricultural crops which are to any extent woody, unless they can be put to some better use. Rice straw, cotton stems pulled by the roots after the seed has been gathered, the stems of windsor beans, those of rape and the millets, all pulled by the roots, and many other kinds, are brought to the market tied in bundles in the manner seen in Figs. 74, 75 and 76. These fuels are used for domestic purposes and for the burning of lime, brick, roofing tile and earthenware as well as in the manufacture of oil, tea, bean-curd and many other processes. In the home, when the meals are cooked with these light bulky fuels, it is the duty of some one, often one of the children, to sit on the floor and feed the fire with one hand while with the other a bellows is worked to secure sufficient draft. The manufacture of cotton seed oil and cotton seed cake is one of the common family industries in China, and in one of these homes we saw rice hulls and rice straw being used as fuel. In the large low, one-story, tile-roofed building serving as store, warehouse, factory and dwelling, a family of four generations were at work, the grandfather supervising in the mill and the grandmother leading in the home and store where the cotton seed oil was being. retailed for 22 cents per pound and the cotton seed cake at 33 cents, gold, per hundredweight. Back of the store and living rooms, in the mill compartment, three blindfolded water buffalo, each working a granite mill, were crushing and grinding the cotton seed. Three other buffalo, for relay service, were lying at rest or eating, awaiting their turn at the ten-hour working day. Two of the mills were horizontal granite burrs more than four feet in diameter, the upper one revolving once with each circuit made by the cow. The third mill was a pair of massive granite rollers, each five feet in diameter and two feet thick, joined on a very short horizontal axle which revolved on a circular stone plate about a vertical axis once with each circuit of the buffalo. Two men tended the three mills. After the cotton seed had been twice passed through the mills it was steamed to render the oil fluid and more readily expressed. The steamer consisted of two covered wooden hoops not unlike that seen in Fig. 77, provided with screen bottoms, and in these the meal was placed over openings in the top of an iron kettle of boiling water from which the steam was forced through the charge of meal. Each charge was weighed in a scoop balanced on the arm of a bamboo scale, thus securing a uniform weight for the cakes.