400 APPENDIX G. 



raised it to the rank of a system, by which he has fully eman- 

 cipated himself from the necessity of paying, as we are com- 

 pelled to do, the least regard to the rotation of crops. By its 

 means he has truly become master of his land. He has not 

 only succeeded in growing crops at the same time which used 

 to follow each other, but he has carried to the highest perfec- 

 tion the principle of mixed cultivation, which begins now to 

 find favour also with our European farmers : he has, in this 

 respect, put an end to our confused and hap-hazard way of 

 mixing crops on the same field, having by the adoption of the 

 method of drill planting, brought order and regularity into the 

 system. The following description of the Japanese system 

 may serve by way of illustration. 



We have a Japanese field before us, in the middle of October, 

 with nothing but buckwheat upon it. The buckwheat is planted 

 in rows, 24 to 26 inches apart ; the intervening, now vacant, 

 space had been sown in spring with small white turnip- 

 radishes, which have already been gathered. These intervening 

 vacant spaces are now tilled with the hoe to the greatest depth 

 attainable by the implement. A portion of the fresh earth is 

 raked from the middle up to the buckwheat, which is now in 

 full flower : a furrow is thus formed in the middle, in which 

 rape is sown, or the grey winter pea, the seed being manured in 

 the manner already described, and seed and manure afterwards 

 covered with a layer of earth. By the time the rape or the 

 peas have grown one to two inches high, the buckwheat is ripe 

 for cutting. A few days after the rows in which it stood are 

 dug up, cleared, and sown with wheat or winter turnips. Thus 

 crop follows crop the whole year through. The nature of the 

 preceding crop is a matter of indifference, the selection of the 

 succeeding one being determined by the store of manure, the 

 season, and the requirements of the farm. If there is a defi- 

 ciency of manure, the intervening rows are allowed to lie fallow, 

 until a sufficient quantity has been collected for them. 



This system, as a whole, has also this great advantage, that 

 the manure may be used at all times, and need never lie idle 

 as a dead capital bearing no interest ; and moreover, perhaps, 

 the most important point of all is that a direct ratio is thereby 

 secured between the power of the soil, as shown in the crops, 



