AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 



57 



while Daidzu serves as a substitute, being, indeed, in a certain 

 sense, oil and spice to the insipid, starchy rice and the barley or 

 millet porridge with which it is eaten. 



The numerous varieties of the soy-bean grow on fine, leafy 

 bushes from 0*50 to 100 metre high, with many and regular twigs. 

 The number and extent of its branches correspond to strength of 

 trunk and root. Among further distinctive features of the plant 

 is its abundant foliage of large triplet leaves, which appear at the 

 numerous internodes. But still more distinctive is the thick 

 reddish brown hair with which pods, leaf-stalks, the upper surfaces 

 of leaves, and even twigs are covered. 



The axes both of trunk and branches in the black-seeded species 

 have a marked tendency to wind, but do not require props. This 

 winding is much less noticeable with the stiffer stems of the pale 

 yellow and reddish brown varieties. At every higher whorl of 

 leaves there is developed a little cluster of blossoms. The blossoms 

 themselves are plain-looking, like those of lentils, in colour a white 

 lilac or pale violet. They are followed by rich growths of fruit, 

 which, with the development of blossoms, continue from the middle 

 of summer till late autumn, when night-frosts usually bring them 

 to a sudden end. 



The pods, roughly haired and hanging, appear mostly in pairs, 

 though often in threes and fours on a common stem. They have 

 short stems and are short and cylindrical themselves. They end 

 in a beak and have as a rule two seeds, with a strongly-marked 

 division between them, as Kaempfer's picture shows. However, 

 among some species there are many pods of three and four beans 

 and sometimes these outnumber the others. Its great need of 

 light and warmth being supplied, a single soy-plant in proper soil, 

 will, according to Haberlandt, put forth two hundred pods, on an 

 average. In regular field cultivation, the crop is, of course, much 

 smaller. Attempts at cultivation in Austria up to 1878 gave 

 widely divergent results, from 680-fold down to a total failure 

 of the crop in consequence of long-continued wet, cold weather. 

 Haberlandt put down at 73-fold the average produce of 1877, 

 after a summer of rain and low temperature. But the crop-returns 

 of China and Japan by no means agree with this. In the latter, 

 for example, according to Scherzer, six Sho of seed-beans of the 

 early-ripening Shiro-mame are credited with a crop of 120 Sho on 

 300 Tsubo of land. This means a harvest of only 20-fold, or, taking 

 account of seed lost in sprouting, about twelve pods of two beans 

 each to every plant. 



In Japan the varieties of soy-bean are distinguished — according 

 to colour, as white (more properly yellowish), black, brownish red, 

 green, and spotted ; according to duration of growth, as early- 

 ripening, middle-ripening, and late-ripening; according to form, 

 as spherical, ellipsoidal, kidney-shaped, and compressed laterally ; 

 according to use, as those which serve principally in making Shoyu 



