AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 23 



steeps, these often are in advance of the peasant in the autumnal 

 harvesting of his bulbs and grains, so laboriously grown. It is then 

 a general practice to keep fires burning all night along the borders 

 of the fields, and to fire off guns to frighten these importunate 

 guests away. But the greatest damage comes from inundations. 

 After many days of uninterrupted heavy downpour like a cloud- 

 burst, or of gentler rain, the water comes dashing down the moun- 

 tain-sides, sweeps away the terraces, and carries off their loamy 

 soil ; or the rising streams in valley and plain overflow their banks, 

 bearing dykes and dams before them, and covering the fields far 

 and wide with mud and boulders. The fruits of long industry, the 

 joys of a toilsome existence, often disappear in a night. Showers 

 of volcanic ashes, too, and typhoons, leave here and there, at longer 

 intervals, their devastating traces. 



The soil of Japan is largely the product of old shales, granite 

 and trachytic eruptions decomposed by weather. It displays in ' 

 most cases small natural fertility, so that newly-broken ground 

 yields only scant harvests. The basic group of crystalline volcanic 

 rock is poorly represented in Japan, especially basalt. Where it 

 or basaltic lavas do occur, one observes in their concentric rings, 

 which peel off under the action of the weather, that species of ferru- 

 ginous loam, which, as in the basalt mountains of Germany, seems 

 not to be wanting in the chief requisites of a fruitful soil. I found 

 such soil on the road from Nagasaki to the Omura bay, as well as 

 in Gumai-gori, on the Koshiu-kaido. Those rich deposits of loess 

 which fringe so many of our valley-bottoms and are also widely 

 spread in Northern China, do not seem to exist there ; ^ and marl- 

 soil, too, which is so productive, is not so frequently found in their 

 lowlands as one might expect. 



Analyses of the soil, in any degree of completeness, were only lately 

 instituted, especially by Kinch,^ Korschelt,^ and Kellner.* With 

 reference to the plain of Kuwanto, these corroborate fully certain 

 old accounts of showers of ashes, which fell upon it, at different 

 times, during eruptions of Fuji-san, Asama-yama, and other vol- 

 canoes. And they also proved, as was formerly discovered through 

 examination and microscopic investigation of the ground, that 

 the topmost layer consists essentially of volcanic ashes and tufa. 

 According to Korschelt, the soil about Tokio is, to a depth of 6 

 meters, a cement-tufa, six parts of which, with an equal amount of 

 sand and one part slacked lime, give a good mortar, sufficiently 

 strong in all cases except where great hardness is required. This 

 tufa-soil consists of 85 per cent, zeoliths and sesquioxides, ii per 

 cent, mineral sand, 1*5 percent, clay, i'5 per cent, quartz sand, and 



^ At least I cannot remember ever having met with any in all my travels. 

 ^ "Transact. Ass. Soc. of Japan," vol. viii., pp. 369-416. 1880. 

 ^ " Mittheilungen der deutschen Gesellschaft Ostasiens," vol. iii., pp. 180-201. 

 1881. 

 •* Nobbe: " Land wirthschaftliche Versuchs-stationen," vol. xxx., pp. 1-86. 1884. 



