\ Chap. XVI. WHEAT— SUMMER CROPS. 273 
the quantity which is burned in this way, it cannot 
be so valuable to the Japanese as it is to us. The 
object in thus burning the barley is, no doubt, to 
economise the space which is available for shelter, 
for, if the grain were left exposed to the rains 
which fall at this season, it would soon germinate 
and spoil. Every evening these heads of corn 
are packed up in baskets and carried home to 
the farmstead, where they are threshed out by 
the flail on the chunnam floor, as I have already 
described. 
The wheat harvest is later than the barley, and 
became general about the 23rd of June. The 
varieties of both wheat and barley did not appear 
to me to be first-rate, but probably they may be 
more suitable to the climate of Japan than those of 
the higher qualities cultivated in Europe. There 
were two or three varieties of wheat, one of them 
a red kind, said to have been imported from the 
United States of America. By the 1st of July 
\ . both barley and wheat harvests were over in 
Nipon, and the summer crops were already pro- 
gressing rapidly on what had formerly been corn- 
fields. 
The summer crops consist of two classes, one 
which is cultivated on the dry hill or corn land, 
and another which succeeds best in the valleys 
which can be irrigated. The first of these consists 
of soy and other beans of that class, French beans, 
hill rice — a kind that does not require irrigation — 
cotton, oily grain ( Sesamum oinentale ), the egg- 
T 
