CULTIVATION OF MARINE ANIMALS IN JAPAN 727 



Egg-cases of Gastropoda: The peculiar leathery egg-cases of vari- 

 ous gastropods have a commercial value in Japan. You see them 

 sold in the streets, dyed red, each costing about half a cent. They 

 are bought by young girls. The cases are turned about in the mouth, 

 and, when filled with air and then squeezed between the tongue 

 and the roof of the mouth, emit a peculiar sound. The same use is 

 made of the fruit of a plant (hozuki), and the mollusk egg-cases serv- 

 ing the purpose are called "umi-hozuki" (sea-hozuki) . These toy 

 things are in such demand that the supply cannot be left simply 

 to the accidental finding of them, and so various methods of culti- 

 vating them have been devised in different parts of Japan. In 

 Chiba boxes are constructed, six by three feet, and two feet high, 

 with wooden sides, and covered with bamboo basket-work on the top 

 and the bottom; in these large whelks (Rapana bezoar) are placed, 

 and the whole left floating in the sea. The mollusks soon deposit 

 their egg-cases on the wooden sides. In Noto pine sticks two to three 

 feet long are anchored by a line and a weight, and are left floating in 

 the sea for the mollusks (Fusus inconstans) to come and deposit their 

 egg-cases on them. In Okayama inverted bamboo baskets are kept 

 anchored in the same way, and serve as the repository of the eggs. 

 There are, no doubt, other methods in other places. These egg-cases, 

 although mere toys, must altogether be worth several tens of thou- 

 sands of yen. Chiba alone produces them to the value of 30,000 yen, 

 and Noto 10,000 yen. 



"Bakagai" (Mactra sulcatoria Deshayes) ; "asari" (Tapes philip- 

 pinarum Adam and Reeve) ; "shijimi" (Corbicula atrata Prime), and 

 other species: These mollusks, especially the last two, are very 

 common, and are consumed in enormous quantities, which facts have 

 naturally led to a greater or less amount of cultivation in some 

 places. They may be collected when young and allowed to grow in 

 culture-grounds, or they may be allowed to grow by systems of 

 rotary crops. Methods would seem to differ in different places. 



The trepang, "namako" (Stichopus japonicus Selenka): In a 

 recent paper of mine (Notes on the Habits and Life-History of 

 Stichopus japonicus Selenka, Annotations, Zoological Japonicce, 

 vol. v., pt. 1), I offered suggestions on the method of propagation 

 of this holothurian, after a study of its life-history. My ideas have 

 not yet been given a fair trial, but in Mikawa Bay, where a part of 

 them have been enforced, the complaint of the decrease of the supply, 

 at least, seems to have ceased. I may perhaps be allowed to quote the 

 last paragraph of the paper. "After I had thought out these meas- 

 ures of protection for Stichopus japonicus from its habits and life- 

 history, my friend, Doctor Kishinouye, was traveling in the some- 

 what out-of-the-way island of Oki, and found that people there had 

 been a hundred years or more in the habit of putting up loose stone 



