AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 37 



grouping and handling the subject, relying chiefly on my own 

 studies and observations, and this, not so much on account of the 

 greater or less completeness and correctness of these Hsts, as be- 

 cause, with the exception of those mentioned under 5, 7, and 8, 

 they fail entirely to indicate the relative importance of the plants 

 which they record. 



2. Food-Plants. 



(a) Grahty Stalk-plants or Cereals, Japanese Kokn-mots2t. 



(Some of these names of millet have been translated literally ; the translator 

 not being able to find English equivalents.) 



Of this group, the following are cultivated in Japan as winter 

 crops : barley (0-mugi), naked barley (Hadaka-mugi), and wheat ^ 

 (Ko-mugi) ; and as summer crops, rice (Kome or Ine), common 

 millet (Kibi), Italian-millet (Awa), crowfoot-millet (Hiye), finger- 

 millet (Kamomata-kibi), Guinea-corn (Morokoshi), maize (T6- 

 morokoshi), and Job's tears (Dzudzu-dama). It follows from this 

 list that two of our cereals, rye and oats, are wanting. If they are 

 nevertheless found here and there referred to among the cultivated 

 plants of the country, such reference is to recent attempts at their 

 introduction, or other kinds of grain have been mistaken for them. 

 I have never seen them growing there, and the witness of Ito 

 Keiske, and others acquainted with the flora of Japan, shows that 

 they are not known in that country. And the fact that v. Siebold's 

 list^ of Japanese friimenta does not include rye and oats, agrees 

 with this. On the other hand, buckwheat (Soba),. although be- 

 longing to an entirely different family, must be mentioned next 

 in order, for the nutritive quality of its seeds and their use. 



As already mentioned, the land which supports these various 

 varieties of grain is of two kinds, namely ta, rice-land, and hata, 

 dry-land ; the difference being merely that the former is flooded 

 and turned into a sort of marsh. It is the larger in extent, cor- 

 responding to the preponderance of rice in amount and importance 

 over the total products of all other grain. Having regard to the 

 immense predominance of rice, I shall begin now with a descrip- 

 tion of it and its cultivation, and then add shorter notices of the 

 other stalk-plants. 



I. Rice (Japanese Ine, Urushine, or Kome — Oryza sativa, L.). 

 Upon a hollow stalk, not very strong, and from 50 to 120 cm. high, 

 the rice-plant (Ine, or Urushine) develops a narrow, overhanging 

 panicle, with single-blossoming ears, and from thirty to sixty — 

 even occasionally one hundred — grains of seed. There are over 

 two hundred sub-species of this ancient plant, with or without 

 awns, varieties with white, yellow, brown, and black chaff and 



^ " Verhandl. van het Batav. Genotscbap," XII. deel. Batav. 1830. "Synopsis 

 Plant. Oec. Univ. Regni Jap." 



