JAPANESE HUSBANDRY. 401 



and the stock of manure on hand, a ratio not disturbed licre hy 

 artificial means or by any '^our de force.'' Expressed in other 

 words, the income and expenditure of the soil are always kept 

 evenly balanced. 



I have seen this system carried out to the fullest attainable 

 degree in the vicinity of large towns, such as Jeddo, also in 

 particularly fertile valleys, and on fields bordering on the great 

 highways. Here crop succeeded crop, manure followed manure. 

 Here the plot of ground produced much more than could be 

 consumed on it ; but the great city and the privies on the high- 

 road returned a supply of manure to balance the export of 

 produce. 



I have, however, also had occasion to visit farms situated on 

 some hilly part far away from the high road, and only recently 

 reclaimed and cultivated. As the Japanese farmer, as a general 

 rule, prefers the valleys to the hilly ground, the supply of manure 

 here is more restricted and more difficult, and any addition to it 

 from towns or by travellers is almost altogether out of the ques- 

 tion. Here I found occasionally only one crop on the ground ; yet 

 the rows were so wide asunder that another crop would have 

 found ample space between them. With this system it is at 

 least possible to till properly and repeatedly the intervening 

 spaces, which are intended to receive the next crop ; besides 

 the constant supply of fresh earth to the present crop, by raking, 

 places a larger store of soil at the disposal of the latter than 

 could be done in any other way. In this manner only the one- 

 half of the field (corresponding to the limited supply of manure) 

 is actually made to produce ; but the system of planting the 

 crop in drills \vide asunder always gives a much more abundant 

 return than could possibly be obtained, if the one-half of the 

 field aa a continuous plot were completely sown, the other half 

 being allowed to lie fallow. As the home production of manure 

 or the importation of it from other parts, increases, the farmer 

 proceeds to fill part also of the vacant rows, which thus leaves 

 only the third or fourth part of the field fallow, until, at last, 

 every row is made to produce crops. 



How wide the difference between this system and ours ! 

 When we break up and till a plot of ground, we begin by 

 extracting from it three or four harvests, without bestowing a 

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