44 
IMPERIAL COLLEGE OP 
developed breeds. Even the native breeds are not healthy 
under the present system of feeding. According to in¬ 
formation kindly furnished, by Prof. -Janson of our college, 
it is an exception to find a horse free from chronic catar- 
rhalic affection of the intestines, among those supplied here 
to the dissecting room ; while, according to his obser¬ 
vations in the veterinary college at Berlin, it is a rare 
occurence there, if among a hundred horses a single one has 
that disease, which, as a rule, owes its origin to bad food. 
If the raising of cattle and hoi’ses is to attain the level 
of other countries, the improvement of the coarse fodders 
has to be aimed at, first of all. Forage crops must then 
occupy a part of the fields, or they must be cultivated on 
the present waste land, and in either case they will be of great 
benefit to the agriculture at larg - e. Clover, lucerne and 
other deep-rooted perennial leguminous crops deserve par¬ 
ticular attention, because on account of their properties of 
chiefly feeding on the nutrients of the deeper layers of 
the soil and of assimilating free nitrogen, they constantly 
increase the stock of fertilizing 1 ing-redients in the farm, 
and are thus a treasure, hitherto unknown to the Japanese 
farmer. They are, indeed, totally absent from the list of 
crops cultivated here at present, but this is by no means 
due to their not thriving well in this country. Their 
absence is merely a consequence of the slight attention hither¬ 
to paid to the raising of live-stock. If properly cultivated, 
on a soil well cleaned, and supplied before sowing with some 
manure, excellent crops are produced. Besides this also 
among the indigenous wild papilionaceæ some are likely to 
occur, which may well return the expenses for an experi¬ 
mental cultivation, as I have pointed out on another 
occasion.—Large ci’ops are furthermore obtained from the 
majority of the other forage plants, especially from fodder 
maize ; but these may require too much manure in the 
present very exhausted condition of soils. 
