au gras, was better tasted, and therefore preferred by good judges for those purposes:  that the consumption of rice, in this form, was much the most considerable, but that the superior beauty of the Carolina rice, seducing the eye of those purchasers who are attached to appearances, the demand for it was upon the whole as great as for that of Piedmont.  They supposed this difference of quality to proceed from a difference of management; that the Carolina rice was husked with an instrument which broke it more, and that less pains were taken to separate the broken from the unbroken grains; imagining that it was the broken grains which dissolved in oily preparations:  that the Carolina rice costs somewhat less than that of Piedmont; but that being obliged to sort the whole grains from the broken, in order to satisfy the taste of their customers, they ask and receive as much for the first quality of Carolina, when sorted, as for the rice of Piedmont; but the second and third qualities, obtained by sorting, are sold much cheaper.  The objection to the Carolina rice then, being, that it crumbles in certain forms of preparation, and this supposed to be the effect of a less perfect machine for husking, I flattered myself I should be able to learn what might be the machine of Piedmont, when I should arrive at Marseilles, to which place I was to go in the course of a tour through the seaport towns of this country.  At Marseilles, however, they differed as much in the account of the machine, as at Paris they had differed about other circumstances.  Some said it was husked between mill-stones, others between rubbers of wood in the form of mill-stones, others of cork.  They concurred in one fact, however, that the machine might be seen by me, immediately on crossing the Alps.  This would be an affair of three weeks.  I crossed them, and went through the rice country from Vercelli to Pavia, about sixty miles.  I found the machine to be absolutely the same with that used in Carolina, as well as I could recollect a description which Mr. E. Rutledge had given me of it.  It is on the plan of a powder-mill.  In some of them, indeed, they arm each pestle with an iron tooth, consisting of nine spikes hooped together, which I do not remember in the description of Mr. Rutledge.  I therefore had a tooth made, which I have the honor of forwarding you with this letter; observing, at the same time, that as many of their machines are without teeth as with them, and of course, that the advantage is not very palpable.  It seems to follow, then, that the rice of Lombardy (for though called Piedmont rice, it does not grow in that country, but in Lombardy) is of a different species from that of Carolina; different in form, in color, and in quality.  We know that in Asia they have several distinct species of this grain.  Monsieur Poivre, a former Governor of the Isle of France, in travelling through several countries of Asia, observed with particular attention the objects of their agriculture, and he tells us,