clxvi 



food, though swine-flesh and poultry are quite common, but still sparingly 

 in use for food. Single oxen and horses are used somewhat, especially in 

 the northern parts, as draft animals ; but there are not cattle, horses and 

 sheep enough in all China, nor in Japan, to furnish flesh for food or ma- 

 nure for the land. Human excrement is the chief resource for manure. 

 and it is collected and saved with extraordinary care and with many inge- 

 nious contrivances, and, mixed with other materials, is poured, in a liquid 

 state, out of buckets and ladles, about the roots of the plants. Tea, rice, 

 wheat, barley, buckwheat, millet, corn, cotton, potatoes, mulberry trees, 

 yams, batatas, onions, cucumbers, melons, beans, cabbage, carrots, and 

 a variety of other garden vegetables, are cultivated, principally in rows 

 and in beds, with interval spaces between, in which the seed of one crop is 

 sown while another crop is ripening for the harvest; and as soon as one 

 crop is harvested the same ground is immediately prepared and manured 

 again for another crop, the same season ; so that there is almost a continual 

 alternation and succession of crops, on the same land, the year round. 

 Extensive arrangements are made for inundating the rice fields, and for irri- 

 gating the lands over the whole country and up to the highest terraces on 

 the hills. The rudest sort of plows, however, with mattocks and hoes, are 

 used, and water-wheels are employed for raising water out of the rivers for 

 purposes of irrigation. The harvests are cut with knives and sickles, and 

 gathered in by hand. Women and children as well as men work in the 

 fields. It is evident that nothing but the continual and careful manuring 

 of the soil could have kept up its fertility, under constant cropping, for so 

 many thousand years. The value set upon manure by these people would 

 be hardly credible to the European or American farmer. The simplest 

 methods are employed for threshing grain. Sometimes animals tread out 

 the grain on threshing-grounds, and sometimes flails are used. There are 

 different crops for the winter and summer seasons. Agriculture employs 

 the greatest part of the population. The state of things in Japan is very 

 similar, but with some differences. In general, there is great industry, 

 cheerfulness, and plenty; and when scarcity or famine occurs, the neces- 

 sities of the destitute are provided for by a kind of public depot supplied 

 by fixed contributions. The public taxes are a large item in the whole 

 economy. — The peculiar interest of this excellent article consists in the 

 minuteness and accuracy of particulars, of which no abstract can be given. 



A lengthy discussion followed the abstract of Prof. Loomis's 

 paper, the point of which was the re-affirmation of the well- 

 known fact that a high barometer is indicative of a low tempera- 

 ture, and vice versa. 



Dr. Engelmann made the following meteorological report : 



The extraordinary low temperature for last January, 2i°-3, was in the 



last forty years surpassed only by January, 1856, 20°.i ; January, 1S57, 



i9.°3; and February, 1S3S, 20°.S. These four were by far the coldest 



months during the period of his observations. The lowest temperature in 



