AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 27 



animals hitherto worth taking into account, — are fed in stalls the 

 whole year round, with few exceptions, so that the traveller in 

 Japan seldom if ever sees a pasturing herd. 



Long before our farmers had had their attention drawn 

 by chemical investigations to the high proportion of nitrogen, 

 phosphoric acid, and potash in cesspool manure, and learned to 

 value and use it, this played a distinguished role in the empirical 

 agriculture of China and Japan. Human excrements compose 

 here the manure which is most employed and therefore of most 

 account. Fish-guano and oil-cakes are the only things preferred 

 to it. The chief growth-giving element of this cesspool manure, 

 especially for grasses,^ and thus also for straw-plants, is, as is well 

 known, nitrogen, which is mostly present in the shape of urea and 

 carbonate of ammonia, but escapes if the manure is not soon 

 applied, on account of the quickness with which these bodies are 

 decomposed, forming free ammonia. 



How they gather these human excrements and turn them to 

 account is a highly interesting question, since the problem of puri- 

 fying our cities, and meeting the increased demands upon our 

 agriculture, has been already so much discussed. The chief points 

 regarding it will therefore be given here. 



The system is simple, but will hardly be imitated by us, for it 

 has not that regard for eyes and noses which our civilization 

 demands. The corresponding senses of the Japanese are probably 

 no less acute than ours ; but the habit of seeing and smelling dung 

 has evidently made them accustomed to it, in much the same way 

 as practitioners in anatomical and chemical laboratories get used 

 to sights and smells which nauseate the beginner. 



There are regions in Europe where the way to the closet is 

 through the kitchen ; in Japan it is, as a rule, through the best 

 room, or at any rate close by it. Japanese dwelling-houses are 

 built lightly of wood, and only one or two storeys high, tending 

 generally more to length and depth than to height. They never 

 have cellars and chimneys, and generally no foundation-walls 

 either. The lower floor rests on posts or stones two or three feet 

 above the ground ; kitchen and ordinary living rooms almost 

 always face the street, with the better rooms on the other side, 

 fronting a garden, from which they are separated by a verandah 

 about a meter broad. A step along this verandah takes one to the 

 closet adjoining it at one end, called Chodzu-ba, Yoba, or (vulgarly) 

 Setzu-in. On account of the light open framework of the house, it 

 often happens that the odour from this place floats directly into its 

 best rooms, as any one who travels in Japan can often enough 

 observe. 



The Chodzu-ba has a floor of deal, with a rectangular opening 

 in the middle, and a tub or a large earthen jar as a receptacle 



• ^ See Lavves and Gilbert : " The Effect of Different Manures on the Mixed 

 Herbage of Grass-land." Journ. Roy. Agric. Soc, vol. xxiv. Part I. 



