JAPANESE HUSBANDRY. 389 



draught or for fattening, and without the \o.nst supply of guano, 

 ground bones, saltpetre, or rape-cake. This is Japan. 



I cannot help smiling when I remember how, on my passing 

 through England, one of the great leaders of agriculture in that 

 country, pointing to his abundant stock of cattle, endeavoiu-ed 

 with an authoritative air to impress upon my mind the following 

 axioms, as the great secret of true wisdom : — ' Tiie more 

 fodder, the more flesh ; the more flesh, the more manure ; the 

 more manure, the more grain ! ' The Japanese peasant knows 

 nothing of this chain of conclusions ; he simply holds fast to one 

 indisputable axiom, viz. \vithout continuous manuring there can 

 be no continuous production. A small portion of what I take 

 from the soil is replaced by nature (the atmosphere and the 

 rain), the remainder I must restore to the ground ; the manner 

 in which this is done is a matter of indifference. That the 

 produce of the land has first to pass through the human body 

 before it can be returned to the soil, is, as far as manuring is 

 concerned, simply a necessary evil, which always involves a 

 certain loss. As to the intermediate stage of cattle feeding, 

 which we deem so requisite in our system, the Japanese farmer 

 cannot at all see its necessity. He argues in his way that it 

 must cost a great deal of unnecessary and expensive labour to 

 have the produce of the field first eaten by cattle, so troublesome 

 and expensive to breed, and that this system must involve more 

 considerable loss of matter than his own. How much more 

 simple it must be to eat the corn yourself, and to produce your 

 own manure ! Far from me be it, however, upon the ground of 

 the so widely differing residts to which the developement of 

 agriculture has led in the two lands, to pass judgement upon our 

 system of husbandry, and to exalt unduly that of the Japanese 

 by attributing superior intelligence to that nation. Circum- 

 stances have brought about the results in question, and the fol- 

 lowing more especially have exercised a decided influence in the 

 matter. The religious belief of the two great sects in Japan, 

 the Sintoists and the Buddhists, forbids the eating of flesh, and 

 not alone of flesh, but of everything derived from animals 

 (mik, butter, cheese) ; this prohibition, of course, disposes of one 

 of the principal objects for which cattle are bred. Even sheep, 

 if kept for the wool alone, would not pay, as our farmers begin 

 to find out even in Germany. 



