CHAPTER III; 

 The Fruit Soils of Japan. 



As stated in the foregoing chapter, our damp and hot 

 summer and cold winter, though less extreme than on the 

 continent, has greatly affected the decomposition and removal 

 of recks and soils. So, it is not uncommon that soils derived 

 from the same mother rock have widely different properties 

 and further on slopes it frequently happens that the texture of 

 the. soil differs in different layers, being clayey at the bottom, 

 loamy in the middle part, and rocky at the top. Such a 

 great variation of soil texture in a small area seems never to 

 occur on the continents. Furthermore, the water-holding 

 capacity of our soils is great and therefore their productivity is 

 highest in rather light and permeable loams, whilst the clay 

 goils commonly regarded as most fertile in Europe, are too 

 heavy for general Agricultural purposes, especially in rice fields. 

 There are, however, exceptions to this rule in fruit growing. 

 Some kinds of fruits produce the best crops in heavy soils, 

 thus behaving differently from most farm crops. 



The influence of the climate is shown not only in the 

 physical texture of the soils, but also in their chemical com- 

 position, which is widely different from that of the soils of 

 foreign countries. The fertilising elements differ greatly in 

 their qualities in the top and the subsoils. They are either 

 lost by washing, or permeate into the subsoil, which always 

 contains a greater percentage of them. According to the 

 ot^servations of the Fertiliser Survey, the contents of 

 phosphoric acid in the arable soil of our fields are only ©ne 

 third of the subsoil contents. Sometimes^ it scarcely reaches 



