182 
RICE-CULTIVATION. 
employed to plough the land ; but in Japan it is 
prepared by manual labour alone : a pronged fork 
is employed to dig and break up the soil. Vege- 
table matter is used in a fresh state for manure, as 
in China. Women, old men, and children were 
employed on the edges of the fields, and on every 
hill-side, in cutting grass and weeds for this pur- 
pose. These, being scattered over the land and 
mixed with mud and water, rot in a very short 
space of time and afford nourishment to the rice- 
crops. A week or two after this fresh manure is 
thrown upon the land every trace of it disappears 
from the surface. It probably goes on decaying for 
some time underground, thus feeding in a peculiar 
manner the roots of the paddy with those gases 
given off during the process of decomposition. 
In the corners of many fields little patches of 
land had been carefully dug and manured as seed- 
beds for rearing the young paddy. Each of 
these patches was banked round with earth and 
connected with a mountain-stream, so that it could 
be irrigated at pleasure. Some of these seed-beds 
had been already sown, and we observed the 
natives engaged in sowing others as we passed 
along. 
On the dry hill-lands the crops of wheat and 
barley were coming into ear, beans and peas were 
in full bloom, the cabbage oil-plant {Brassica 
sinemis ) here, as at Nagasaki, was seen in patches 
over the hill-sides, and the air was perfumed with 
its fragrant blossoms. 
