68 JAPAN'S AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION. 


Carts may also be used for the carriage of skimmed or 
separated milk, provided that they bear above the tap the 
inscription ‘‘Skimmed Milk” in dark blue letters at least 
two inches high on a white ground. 
No milk may be sold for human consumption which con- 
tains any added water or foreign substance whatever, such 
as preservative agents. This prohibition applies equally <o 
colostral milk; to milk altered by microgerms or infectious 
material; and to the milk of animals whose food may have 
contained some poisonous plant, or which may have been 
given medicine containing poison, or which are suffering 
from a contagious disease. Nevertheless, the milk of cows 
affected with foot-and-mouth disease may be sold after 
having been heated by a special process approved by the 
Minister of Agriculture and Public Works. 
[Decrees of 18 Nov., 1894,; 31 Oct. 1898, ; and 9 Jan., 7899. | 

JAPAN’S PRODUCTION AND IMPORTATION OF AGRICULTURAL 
PRODUCE. 
In his report to the Foreign Office on the foreign trade of 
Japan for 1899, Mr. A. H. Lay states that the growth in the 
importation of food-stuffs other than rice becomes more 
noticeable year by year. Manufacturing Japan is driving 
agricultural Japan into the background. The yield ot 
agricultural produce is practically at a standstill. In 1899 
an increase in the totals of imports under the following 
headings may be noted:—Beans, pease and pulse, fresh 
eggs, and salted fish, etc. Flour, meal and starches have 
undergone a diminution in quantity (though 1898 showed a 
very considerable increase), but this is not to be wondered at 
considering the good grain crop, almost without parallel, of 
1898. The harvest of wheat and barley in 1899 was com- 
paratively small owing to the bad weather, which was so 
disastrous to the rice, and moreover the area devoted to the 
cultivation of these cereals is not now so large as it was a 
few years ago, so that the demand for foreign flour, meal, 
