May 5.—The old English rhyme "Oats and beans and barley grow....you and I and nobody know," and I am certain that I, at least, do not know how they have managed to grow at all this year: yet barley is now heavy in the ear and the wheat not far behind it.
ats are seldom grown here, but the rapid-growing beans are everywhere and tons of these will be lost to the farmers if they are barred from entering and leaving the Hungjao district. I wonder if high military commands realize that? So plentiful are these beans in China that Mr. Porterfield includes them in his book on weeds and wild flowers! The common name seems to be doubtful, so you m. CaN them Broad Beans, Windsor beans, English dwarf beans, or Horse beans....or nonchalantly refer to them as Vicia Faba, Linn r you happen to be a botanist. Now that the country people are struggling back to the land, is astonishing to see how much work is being ne in a short time: wherever three walls a bit of roof stand the family are buck and living in the patched-up home: fields are being cleared of weeds in every hour of day-light and already under patches of brown oil-pa the seeds of "long beans," cucumbers and such summer crops are being forced to gro with a rapidity almost rivalling Jack's beanstalk: sometimes the paper is laid flat over the seeds and held down with bricks; in other cases it is stretched over a light bamboo frame a few inches from the ground, and under its sheltering rmth the plants just walk up. Some of the: crops are already planted out, just waiting fo: the bamboo supports which will take them in close 0; six feet above the ground, You t fool a Chinese farmer into growing cucumon the ground—they would take up too much room! And as I walk about among these industrious and ingenious people, my mind goes back again to the English rhyme and its final lines stating that the farm "stamps his foot and claps his hand and turns around to view the land." He may well stamp his foot this year, but I cannot see that he has got much io clap his hands about,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.