44 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



conducts the water of the Sesia to the rice-fields of Vercelli and 

 its neighbourhood. Every liter of it must be paid for ; but its 

 rational use richly rewards this expense, and many others, with 

 high profits. 



In June, — seldom earlier or later, and about 30 to 45 days after 

 sowing-time, — in Japan the young rice-plants are transplanted 

 from the seed-bed to the ground prepared for them, which has 

 been flooded to a depth of 6 to 10 cm. These shoots (nae) have 

 then a height of 18 to 24 cm. After being pulled up, they are tied 

 into small bunches, not too large round to be spanned with the 

 hand. One man takes a number of such bunches under his arm, 

 and wading through the field, throws them singly right and left 

 over the water, wherever they are needed. Others, both men and 

 women, pick them up, and the planting begins. They set out the 

 little bunches in rows, 4 to 6 plants in a bunch, calculating the 

 intervals of 20 to 25 cm. skilfully with the eye, so that between 

 1,200 and 3,000 bunches go to an are. Silver-herons and cranes 

 follow the busy planters, as starlings and wagtails fly after the 

 plough with us, picking up slugs and snails. 



Let one instance here show with what astounding rapidity all 

 the above-mentioned proceedings take place : 



In the spring of 1875 I had occasion to traverse, at different 

 times, the plain of Ozaka, which is watered by the Yodogawa, the 

 outlet of the Biwa Lake. On April i, the first rape-blossoms were 

 visible. Barley and wheat had not yet put forth their stalks. There 

 were but few fallow rice-fields to be seen. On June 3, scarcely nine 

 weeks later, as I again travelled the same road, rape and barley 

 harvest had commenced, and wheat was quickly nearing maturity. 

 Once more, on June 26, three weeks later, I had an opportunity, of 

 seeing this fruitful plain and rejoicing in its fine cultivation. What 

 a change had taken place in that short time ! Of the winter crops 

 — rape-seed, barley, wheat, peas, broad beans — of the high beds 

 and deep furrows in the dry fields, of the countless happy mortals 

 who were busy with the harvest on June 3 — of all these there is 

 now nothing to be seen. The whole wide plain appears as if 

 transformed by magic. Great reaches of it have been levelled, 

 girt about with dikes and ditches, and changed to a marsh. The 

 muddy ground is covered everywhere with rice-plants of a lovely 

 green, out of which, here and there, dry patches with other crops 

 project singly. Now and again one sees a solitary farmer stalking 

 through this field of rice, here regulating the ingress of water with 

 his hoe, there pressing in a plant more firmly with his hands or 

 replacing those that have not sprouted. Silver-herons fish in this 

 artificial swamp between the green rows of rice-bunches, and men 

 fish in the intersecting ditches. Yet a {q\^ weeks, and one looks 

 out over a continuous carpet of the loveliest emerald-green, like a 

 cultivated lawn, in which, also, there is no lack of flower-beds, in the 

 form of small dry patches bearing cotton, millet, and vegetables. 



