326 The National Geographic Magazine 



also imported from Great Britain, fish 

 guano from Siberia, animal bone from 

 China, and other fertilizing materials 

 from different countries. 



The principal agricultural products, 

 named in the order of their acreage, are 

 rice, rye, barley, wheat, beans, mulber- 

 ries, sweet potatoes, millet, buckwheat, 

 rape, red beans, Italian millet, tea, in- 

 digo leaves, potatoes, sorghum, tobacco 

 leaves, cotton, and hemp. The area 

 devoted to rice cultivation constitutes a 

 little more than two-fifths of the total 

 area of arable land. The greater part 

 of the rice fields are in low-lying land, 

 which can be easily flooded, but some 

 upland rice is raised. Mulberry trees 

 and tea plants are usually planted on 

 land not suitable for more important 

 crops, such as the slopes of hills, sandy 

 dunes, and similar places. In the 

 warmer parts of the empire barley and 

 rape are often raised as a second crop 

 after rice has been harvested, but far- 

 ther north the excess of moisture re- 

 quired for rice leaves the land too cold 

 for another crop the same year. 



Stock raising is still in its infancy in 

 Japan, and is not likely to become an 

 important industry, owing to the high 

 price of land and the coarseness of the 



native grasses, most of which are not fit 

 for food for cattle or horses. Oats and 

 maize as foods for farm animals are 

 practically unknown, and what passes 

 for hay is a kind of straw, which is 

 chopped fine before it is fed to horses. 

 A little less than one-sixth of the arable 

 land consists of plains and pastures, and 

 of this about two-fifths belong to the 

 state and the imperial household, the 

 remainder being owned by private stock 

 raisers, who raise stock principally for 

 tillage and draft animals. The natives 

 are not accustomed to the use of butter 

 or milk, and do not usually like the 

 taste of them, and their religious preju- 

 dices have hitherto prevented the gen- 

 eral use of meat of any kind, although 

 they now seem to be developing a taste 

 for all these kinds of food. 



Farmers do not engage in poultry 

 raising to a sufficient extent to provide 

 the eggs needed for home consumption, 

 these being imported from China to the 

 value of over $500,000 per year. Fruit 

 raising, under the stimulus of govern- 

 ment encouragement, has advanced con- 

 siderably, but is not yet an important 

 branch of farming in this country. 

 Bee culture is also engaged in to a lim- 

 ited extent. 



LAKE CLARK, A LITTLE KNOWN ALASKAN 



LAKE 



By Wilfred H. Osgood, of the U. S. Biological Survey 



LAKE CLARK is situated north- 

 west of Cook Inlet, near the base 

 of the Alaskan Peninsula, and, 

 although comparatively accessible, it 

 was not discovered by white men until 

 1 89 1. In February of that year J. W. 

 Clark, agent of the Alaska Commercial 

 Company at Nushagak, and A. B. 

 Schanz, of the Eleventh Census and of 



Frank Leslie's Alaska Expedition, as- 

 cended the Nushagak Valley with dogs 

 and sleds, crossed the divide at the head 

 of a small southeastern tributary of the 

 Nushagak River, and descended to the 

 lake which now bears Clark's name. 

 This winter trip of Clark and Schanz 

 gave but little opportune for explora- 

 tion, and since their rather limited ac- 



