The National Geographic Magazine 



mm 



Women Engaged in Sorting the Crude Kelp 



short time the cormorants' gullets begin 

 to bulge with ayu ; when they are well 

 filled the birds are pulled up to the gun- 

 wales one by one and their catch is 

 gently squeezed into baskets. This 

 continues for several hours, and each 

 cormorant may fill its gullet fifteen to 

 twenty times. 



Spectators usually go to the fishing 

 grounds in a kind of barge, illuminated 

 by lanterns, and eat their dinner on 

 board while waiting at a convenient 

 point for the fishing boats to arrive. 

 During the evening when I witnessed 

 the fishery the seven boats in whose 

 operations I was particularly interested 

 averaged 700 to 800 fish apiece, and 

 the aggregate catch was worth $150 — a 

 very respectable sum to Japanese fisher- 

 men. 



The fishery is prosecuted with enthu- 



siasm by both men and cormorants, and 

 the shouts of the fishermen, the hoarse 

 croaking of the birds, the rush of the 

 mountain stream, the splashing and 

 creaking of the paddles, the hissing of 

 the embers as they fall into the water, 

 the weird lights and shadows combine to 

 make a performance which a westerner 

 is not likely soon to forget. 



TERRAPIN FARMS 



The cultivation of water products has 

 gone hand in hand with the fisheries, 

 and in certain lines has attained greater 

 perfection and extent than in any other 

 country. The raising of terrapin, which 

 with us is an unsolved problem and has 

 only recently been seriously considered, 

 has for years been very successfully car- 

 ried on by the Japanese. I visited a 

 terrapin farm near Tokyo, where 50,000 



