JAPANESE HUSBANDRY. 371 



tern is, at least, fully admitted on all hands, the only objection oc- 

 casionally raised against it being that it requires a large supply of 

 manure. But the most enthusiastic admirer of the system in 

 Europe can hardly conceive how universally and in what high per- 

 fection it is carried on in Japan. 



The Japanese husbandman has come to treat his field as a 

 plastic material, to be turned to account in any way or form he 

 pleases, just as a tailor may cut out of a piece of cloth, cloaks, 

 coats, trowsers or vests, and occasionally makes the one out of the 

 other. To-day we find a plot of ground covered with a wheat 

 crop ; in eight days the wheat is reaped, and one half of the field 

 is transformed into a swamp thoroughly saturated with water, in 

 which the farmer, sinking up to his knees, is busy planting rice, 

 whilst the other half is a broad and dry plot, raised 2 or 2| feet 

 above the rice swamp, and ready to receive cotton, or sweet pota- 

 toes, or buckwheat. It often happens also that a square plot in 

 the centre is turned into a dry bed, surrounded by a broad rice 

 swamp ; and as the water must cover the surface of the latter 

 only slightly, the levelling must have been effected with great 

 care, and with the use of instruments. 



The whole of this work has been done by tbe farmer and his 

 small family in a very short time. That it could be accomplished 

 in so short a time is a proof of the great depth of the loose araUe 

 soil, even after a harvest ; and that the farmer could venture to do 

 so without troubling himself about the next crop, is a sign of the 

 abounding wealth of the soil in mineral constituents. It is only 

 when great depth of the loose arable soil is combined with a plen- 

 tiful store of mineral constituents that deep tillage of the ground 

 can truly be resorted to. The description here given is not a mere 

 fiction or creation of the imagination, but a faithful statement of 

 facts such as I have had occasion to -witness by the hundred. 

 Considering that rice requires at least from 1 to 1-J feet of cultivated 

 soil, and adding to this half the height of the raised bed, viz. 1 to 1| 

 feet, this gives a cultivated depth of arable soil of from 2 to 3 feet. 



This system of working the land at pleasure either as a raised 

 dry plot or as a swamp, is indeed, at present, in Japan, simply a 

 proof of the existence of deep tillage ; but it is clearly evident that 

 it must have been, at one time, also, the means of effecting it. If 

 we are always to wait until we have collected a sufficient excess 

 of manure (at the best but a very relative term), before proceeding 

 to deepen the arable crust of our land, we may certainly predict 

 that the system will but very rarely make any progress with us. 

 Everybody knows that one cannot learn to swim without going 

 into the water. 



The introduction and constant progress of the system of deep 

 tillage have been powerfully assisted in Japan by the practice pur- 

 sued from time immemorial of growing all crops in drills. With 

 the advantage of this method we have also long been familiar. 



