390 APPENDIX G. 



The very limited area of the homesteads in Japan also makes 

 the maintaining of cattle superfluous. The smallness of the 

 farms must not be attributed, however, to any excessive tendency 

 to subdivision of landed property, but to the fact that the land 

 belongs to the great princes or Daimios of the country, who have 

 bestowed it in fee upon the loAver nobility. The latter, again, 

 being precluded by the institutions of the country from farming 

 theii- own estates, have parcelled the land out, apparently from 

 time immemorial, on perpetual leases, among the peasantry of 

 the country. The size of these farms varies from two to five 

 acres ; the limitation having been most likely determined either 

 by their natural position, or from the course of some brook or 

 rivulet. Now, as this limited area is intersected moreover by 

 drains and ditches, it will be readily seen that there is hardly a 

 plot of ground to be found where the use of beasts of burden 

 might be profitably had recourse to. 



Now, with us matters are very different in these respects. 

 We have a notion that we could not possibly exist in health and 

 vigour without a considerable consumption of meat, although 

 we have the fact constantly before our eyes, that our labourers, 

 who assuredly require as much strength as any other class of 

 society, are, for the most part, involuntary Buddhists. Our 

 farms are always sufficiently large to preclude the notion of 

 working them by hand, even leaving out of consideration the 

 important circumstance that the price of labour is rather too 

 high, in proportion to the value of the produce, to admit of 

 such a system of farming. But that the culture of the soil is 

 everywhere in the world in direct ratio to the division of the 

 land is a well-established fact, of which the reality and sig-nifi- 

 cance are made most clearly apparent to the traveller who 

 passes from the north of Grermany to Japan, via England. 



The only manure-producer, therefore, in Japan is man ; and 

 we need not wonder that the greatest care should be bestowed 

 in that country upon the gathering, preparing, and applying his 

 excrements. Now, as their entire course of proceeding contains 

 much that is highly instructive for us, I consider it my duty to 

 give as detailed a description of it as possible, even at the risk 

 of offending the delicate feelings of the reader. 



The Japanese does not construct his privy as we do in 



