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The National Geographic Magazine 



But suppose we had free hides and 

 free shoes ; what would be the result ? We 

 should soon have millions of pairs of 

 cheap shoes dumped on our market. The 

 material being the same, the foreign 

 manufacturer with his low-priced labor — 

 a labor costing one-half or one-third of 

 ours — could close our factories or else 



compel our laborers to work for starva- 

 tion wages. The purchasing power of the 

 200,000 persons now making shoes would 

 be cut in half or disappear altogether, 

 and so much of our home market would 

 be lost to the farmer and other manufac- 

 turers. We have had just such experi- 

 ences, and it is far from guesswork. 



CULTIVATION OF MARINE AND FRESH 

 WATER ANIMALS IN JAPAN* 



By K. Mitsukuri, Ph. D. 



Professor of Zoology, Imperial University, Tokyo, Japan 



WHILE the pasturage of cattle 

 and the cultivation of plants 

 marked very early steps in 

 man's advancement toward civilization, 

 the raising of aquatic animals and plants, 

 on any extensive scale at all events, 

 seems to belong to much later stages of 

 human development. In fact, the culti- 

 vation of some marine animals has been 

 rendered possible only by utilizing the 

 most recent discoveries and methods of 

 science. I believe, however, the time is 

 now fast approaching when the increase 

 of population on the earth, and the ques- 

 tion of food supply which must arise as 

 a necessary consequence, will compel us 

 to pay most serious attention to the util- 

 ization for this purpose of what has been 

 termed the "watery waste." 



For man to overfish and then to wait 

 for the bounty of nature to replenish, or, 

 failing that, to seek new fishing grounds, 

 is, it seems to me, an act to be put in the 

 same category with the doings of no- 

 madic peoples wandering from place to 

 place in search of pastures. Hereafter, 

 streams, rivers, lakes, and seas will have, 

 so to speak, to be pushed to a more effi- 

 cient degree of cultivation and made to 

 yield their utmost for us. It is perhaps 



superfluous for me to state this before 

 an audience in America, for I think all 

 candid persons will admit that the United 

 States, with her Bureau of Fisheries, is 

 leading other nations in bold scientific 

 attempts in this direction. 



Japan, I need hardly remind you, con- 

 sists of an immense number of islands, 

 large and small. In proportion to its 

 area, which is nearly 160,000 square 

 miles, its coast line is immense, being, 

 roughly speaking, 20,000 miles. This is 

 broken up into bays, estuaries, inlets, and 

 straits of all sorts and shapes, with an 

 unusually rich fauna of marine organ- 

 isms everywhere. In addition, the coun- 

 try is dotted with lakes and smaller 

 bodies of fresh water. Put these natural 

 conditions together with the facts that 

 the population, in some districts at least, 

 has been extremely dense, and that until 

 within comparatively recent times hardly 

 any animal flesh was taken as food, and 

 even at the present day the principal food 

 of the general mass of people consists of 

 vegetables and fish — it would be strange 

 indeed if the cultivation of some aquatic 

 organisms had not developed under these 

 circumstances. And such is actually the 

 case. For instance, the oyster culture of 



* This article is abstracted from a paper read before the International Congress of Arts 

 and Sciences, held at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St Louis, Mo., August 21-25, 1904, 

 and published by the U. S. Bureau of Fisheries as a special monograph, 1906. 



