In Japan, rice is always treated in this way. It is treated as our gardeners treat lettuce and cabbage--that is, it is let first to germinate; then it is sown in special warm corners, well inundated with water and protected from the birds by strings drawn over the ground. Thirty-five to fifty-five days later, the young plants, now fully developed and possessed of a thick network of rootlets, are _replanted_ in the open ground. In this way the Japanese obtain from twenty to thirty-two bushels of _dressed_ rice to the acre in the poor provinces, forty bushels in the better ones, and from sixty to sixty-seven bushels on the best lands. The average, in six rice growing states of North America, is at the same time only nine and a half bushels.[202] In China, replanting is also in general use, and consequently the idea has been circulated in France by M. Eugène Simon and the late M. Toubeau, that replanted wheat could be made a powerful means of increasing the crops in Western Europe.[203] So far as I know, the idea has not yet been submitted to a practical test; but when one thinks of the remarkable results obtained by Hallet’s method of planting; of what the market-gardeners obtain by replanting once and even twice; and of how rapidly the work of planting is done by market-gardeners in Jersey, one must agree that in replanted wheat we have a new opening worthy of the most careful consideration. Experiments have not yet been made in this direction; but Prof. Grandeau, whose opinion I have asked on this subject, wrote to me that he believes the method must have a great future. Practical market-gardeners (Paris _maraîcher_) whose opinion I have asked, see, of course, nothing extravagant in that idea. With plants yielding 1,000 grains each--and in the Capelle experiment they yielded an average of 600 grains--the yearly wheat-food of one individual man (5·65 bushels, or 265 lbs.), which is represented by from 5,000,000 to 5,500,000 grains, could be grown on a space of 250 square yards; while for an experienced hand replanting would represent no more than ten to twelve hours’ work. With a proper machine-tool, the work could probably be very much reduced. In Japan, two men and two women plant with rice three-quarters of an acre in one day (Ronna, _Les Irrigations_, vol. iii., 1890, p. 67 seq.). That means (Fesca, _Japanesische Landwirthschaft_, p. 33) from 33,000 to 66,000 plants, or, let us say, a minimum of 8,250 plants a day for one person. The Jersey gardeners plant from 600 (inexperienced) to 1,000 plants per hour (experienced). P.--IMPORTS OF VEGETABLES TO THE UNITED KINGDOM. That the land in this country is not sufficiently utilised for market-gardening, and that the largest portion of the vegetables which are imported from abroad could be grown in this country, has been said over and over again within the last twenty-five years.