v THE SPREADING OF FOOD-PLANTS 53 



eighteen hundred years ago. There is in Japan 

 a monument to the first Japanese who succeeded 

 in bringing these fruits over to his own country. 

 His name was Tajima Mori, and he was sent 

 by the Mikado to China to bring back plants. 

 It took him nine years to get the plants 

 introduced, and the inscription on the monument 

 means, " How magnificent is the result of Taji's 

 work." Every one will agree that it was a fine 

 piece of work to be of use not only to our own 

 generation, but to all the unborn generations down 

 to the end of time ; that is worth nine years of 

 hard work and danger, isn't it ? 



Tajima's dust has lain for eighteen hundred years 

 in the churchyard of Fukushoji, where this monu- 

 ment is erected, but his spirit lives for ever in the 

 scent of the oranges and in their golden fruit. Let 

 us salute the dust of Tajima, and with him the 

 unknown, unrecorded generations of Chinese, whose 

 labours made the sweet, luscious orange from the 

 poor, bitter wild fruit. How magnificent, also, is 

 the result of their work which must have lasted 

 not for nine years but for perhaps long generations. 

 We may smile at the people of China and Japan 

 because they worship their ancestors, but does not 

 that worship partly mean simply that " they are 

 grateful for the gifts their fathers have given them ? 

 They recognise it as their duty to hand on this gift 



