Page:Farmers of forty centuries.djvu/149

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Bamboo Sprouts and Chinese Clover.
131

followed, punctuated with many gesticulations and with the customer tossing the birds into the basket and turning to go away while the dealer grew more earnest. The purchaser finally turned back, and again balancing the roosters upon his scales, called a bystander to read the weight, and then flung them in apparent disdain at the dealer, who caught them and placed them in the customer's basket. The storm subsided and the dealer accepted 92c, Mexican, for the two birds. They were good sized roosters and must have dressed more than three pounds each, yet for the two he paid less than 40 cents in our currency.


Fig 69.—Two beds of Chinese clover (Medicago astragalus) grown in the garden for human food in the season and for soil fertility later.


Bamboo sprouts are very generally used in China, Korea and Japan and when one sees them growing they suggest giant stalks of asparagus, some of them being three and even five inches in diameter and a foot in hight at the stage for cutting. They are shipped in large quantities from province to province where they do not grow or