156 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



Oil-cakes, rich in nitrogen and phosphorus, are used to fertilize 

 the soil. They would make just as good fodder as linseed-cakes. 



To meet the above-mentioned uses, and others besides, we find 

 that, next to rape-seed, the yegoma is grown more extensively than 

 all other oil-producing plants in Japan. In England it has been 

 known, from its Indian home, since 1770. Attempts to cultivate it 

 have in recent times been made in the South of France. Thus 

 Leon de Lunaret, of Montpellier, in 1878, sowed a piece of land 

 measuring 50 square m. with 500 grammes of seed, harvesting 7 kg. 

 of seed in return.^ One ha will accordingly yield at least 500 kg. 

 A further result of these attempts has shown that Perilla ocymoides^ 

 L., only finds in the Mediterranean regions a sufficiently long 

 summer heat for its development, and its cultivation is impossible 

 in higher latitudes in Europe. 



8. Dokuye-no-abura is the name for oil from the nuts of the 

 ElcEococca cordata^ Bl. {E. verrucosa, S. and Z., Aleiirites cordata^ 

 Mull.), a medium-sized tree with wide-spreading crown, of the 

 Euphorbiacea family — a tree cultivated in many parts of Japan, and 

 also in China.^ Of its four Japanese names, Dokuye, Abura-no-ki, 

 Abura-giri, and Yama-giri, the second means " oil-tree," the third 



, " oil-kiri," the fourth " wild-kiri." Kiri (giri) is, however, the name 

 for Patdozvnia imperialism which Elceococca cordata resembles — 

 chiefly in its large, heart-shaped leaves, and partly too in the 

 appearance of its stem. Its large white bunches of blossoms appear 

 late in May and early in June ; the capsules (for three and four 

 seeds) get ripe /in autumn, and remind one, as do also their con- 

 tents, of Ricinus. The oil obtained from these seeds has only 

 recently been closely examined by Cloez.^ It is numbered among 

 the drying-oils, and serves in Japan for illuminating purposes chiefly. 

 In China, where it bears the name T'ung-tsze-yu, i.e., wood-oil, it 

 is used also as a medicine, for greasing wood on ships, and other 

 purposes. This is referred to in the v\2,m^ Elceococca vernicea, Spreng.^ 

 The tree is known all over Japan. It is usually planted in soil 

 that is unfitted for farming, as in Suruga, Echizen, and Kaga. 



The seeds of three other Euphorbiacese and the oils obtained 

 from them, because of their use in medicine, are better known in 

 Europe than the species of which we have just spoken. These are 

 Croton Trigliuni, 'h.yRicinus communis, L.,and Euphorbia Lat/iyris, L. 



9. Himashi-no-abura is the Japanese name for Ricinus-oil. 

 Ricinus (Himashi or T6-goma, ie., Chinese sesame) is raised here 



^ Revue Horticole. 



2 The tree described by Kaempfer in " Amoen. exot.," pp. 789 and 790, under 

 the name oi Abrasin {Ricinus arboreus, fol. Alceas), and by Thunberg in " Flor. 

 jap." as Dryandra cordata, is undoubtedly the same. Both authors mention, 

 besides, the oil for illumination, made from its seeds. 



3 See also Fliickiger: " Archiv d. Pharmacie," 1876, pp. 208 and 422. 



^ From a statement in the Augsburg A. Zeitung, of June 6th, 1876, I learn 

 that termites are expelled by means of this oil in China, and that the French 

 consul in Canton recommended it to his government for the phylloxera vastatrix. 



