372 APPENDIX G. 



Among the favourable features presented by the cultivation of root 

 crops, our books of agriculture always place in a prominent rank 

 the fact that it enables the farmer to deepen the arable soil of his 

 land. All our gardeners, at least, have long ago adopted it. 



I was not fully aware of the true importance of the method of 

 growing crops in drills, until I had occasion to see it carried out 

 to the fullest extent in Japan. We, in Europe, are as yet far from 

 having adopted this plan as an essential part of our system of hus- 

 bandry; we look upon the question still in a very one-sided point 

 of view, only in reference to the individual crop which we wish to 

 grow. But the Japanese farmer has raised it to the rank of a sys- 

 tem, by which he has fully emancipated himself from the neces- 

 sity of paying, as we are compelled to do, the least regard to the 

 rotation of crops. By its means he has truly become master of his 

 land. He has not only succeeded in growing crops at the same 

 time which used to follow each other, but he has carried to the 

 highest perfection the principle of mixed cultivation, which begins 

 now to find favour also with our European farmers : he has, in this 

 respect put an end to our confused and haphazard way of mixing 

 crops on the same field, having by the adoption of the method of 

 drill planting, brought order and regularity into the system. The 

 following description of the Japanese system may serve by way 

 of illustration. 



We have a Japanese field before us, in the middle of October, 

 with nothing but buckwheat upon it. The buckwheat is planted 

 in rows, 24 to 26 inches apart ; the intervening, now vacant, space 

 had been sown in spring with small white turnip-radishes, which 

 have already been gathered. These intervening vacant spaces are 

 now tilled with the hoe to the greatest depth attainable by the im- 

 plement. A portion of the fresh earth is raked from the middle 

 up to the buckwheat, which is now in full flower : a furrow is thus 

 formed in the middle, in which rape is sown, or the grey winter 

 pea, the seed being manured in the manner already described, and 

 seed and manure afterwards covered with a layer of earth. By the 

 time the rape or the peas have grown one to two inches high, the 

 buckwheat is ripe for cutting. A few days after the rows in 

 which it stood are dug up, cleared, and sown with wheat or win- 

 ter turnips. Thus crop follows crop the whole year through. The 

 nature of the preceding crop is a matter of indifference, the selec- 

 tion of the succeeding one being determined by the store of ma- 

 nure, the season, and the requirements of the farm. If there is a 

 deficiency of manure, the intervening rows are allowed to lie fal- 

 low, until a sufficient quantity has been collected for them. 



This system, as a whole, has also this great advantage, that 

 the manure may be used at all times, and need never lie idle as a 

 dead capital bearing no interest ; and moreover, perhaps, the most 

 important point of all is, that a direct ratio is thereby secured be- 

 tween the power of the soil, as shown in the crops, and the stock 



