New York can draw its daily food from a thousand or ten thousand miles. Yeddo, half-way in population between these, must be fed from a circuit of fifty miles. This is sufficient to show, even in the absence of direct proof, that agriculture must have reached a high development in Japan. What we might thus assume à priori is abundantly proved by all writers who have een able to give us any positive information on the subject.

Thunberg, writing a century ago, says: "One sees here the surface of the earth cultivated all over the country, and most of the mountains and hills up to their very tops. Every spot of ground is made use of either for corn-fields or else for plantations of esculent-rooted vegetables, which is the reason that the whole country is very thickly inhabited and populous, and can without difficulty give maintenance to all its innumerable inhabitants."

FISHERMAN RETURNING HOME.

Sir Rutherford Alcock gives us many pictures of agricultural life, drawn from his own observations. This, taken from his account of his journey to Fusiyama, may serve as a sample: "We crossed a broad valley beautifully diversified with clumps of trees, | country residences appeared. Much has been hedgerows, and winding rivulets. Nothing heard of the despotic sway of the feudal lords, could be richer than the soil or the teeming va- and the oppression under which all the laboring riety of its produce. The whole plain was sur- classes toil and groan; but it is impossible to rounded by an amphitheatre of cultivated hills, traverse these well-cultivated valleys, and mark and beyond were mountains stretching higher the happy, contented, and well-to-do-looking and farther, with a shaggy mantle of scrub and populations which have their home amidst so pine. Little snug-looking hamlets and home- much plenty, and believe we see a land entirely steads were nestled among the trees or under the tyrant-ridden, and impoverished by exactions. hills, and here and there the park-walls and On the contrary, the impression is irresistibly glimpses of the avenues leading to the Daimios' borne in upon the mind that Europe can not

show a happier or better-fed peasantry, or a climate and soil so genial or bountiful in its gifts."

All writers upon Japan speak glowingly upon the charms of the region which they have been allowed to visit. The culture is of the highest order, and there is almost an excess of ornamentation. Now in a purely agricultural community every thing ornamental represents the excess of production over the actual wants of the producing population. Food, shelter, and clothing must first be supplied; then come ornament and grace.

Sir Rutherford gives the following picture of the region

around Yokahama: "The

diminished for centuries.

The Japanese peas

in the parks of our English nobility. Every | course, the fertility of the land has remained unwhere the cottages and farm-houses had a neat and clean appearance, such as I had never observed in any other part of the East. The scene was always changing, and always beautiful-hill and valley, broad roads and shaded lanes, houses and gardens, with a people industrious, but unoppressed with toil, and apparently happy and contented." And again: "A remarkable feature in the Japanese character is that, even to the lowest classes, all have an inherent love for flowers, and find in the cultivation of a few pet plants an endless source of recreation and unalloyed pleasure. If it be one of the tests of a high state of civilization among a people, the lower orders among the Japanese come out in a most favorable light when contrasted with the same classes among ourselves." Baron Liebig affirms that the agricultural system of the Japanese is superior to that of any other people. As pursued in England, it would long ago have exhausted the productive powers of the soil were it not for imported manures; whereas in Japan, without any such re

THRESHING.

ant has learned that every plant abstracts some elements from the soil; a small part of these are restored by the atmosphere and the rain; the rest he must himself replace. Not to put too fine a point on it, he has mastered the science and art of manuring. His religion forbidding the use of flesh as food, and the nature of the country restricting the use of animals of burden and draught within the narrowest limits, man is practically the only eating creature, and therefore the only manure producer in Japan; and we need not wonder that the greatest care should be taken in gathering and applying his excrements. Sir Rutherford Alcock gives many curious bits of information upon this subject; but for directness and simplicity of statement commend us to Doctor Maron, who was sent by the Prussian Government to investigate and report upon Japanese husbandry. In order to present a correct idea of Rural Life in Japan we must devote a paragraph to this unsavory but most important subject.

The cabinet" of a Japanese farmer is one of the most essential parts of his house. No room is more nicely papered, or painted and varnished. The depos

its are received into a large vessel sunk below the floor, provided with handles for removing it. When this is full it is taken out and emptied into a huge earthen pot let down nearly to the brim into the ground. Water is added, and

are eating up the Valley of the Mississippi, the shores of the Baltic, and the Steppes of Russia. The subject is a vast one, which is now attracting the attention of European savans. To it Liebig has devoted his last work, the summation of his life-long labors. We shall in course. of time, in spite of our vast untilled territory, be called upon to consider it.

inscriptions the precise reverse of our "Commit | exhausted. London and Paris and New York no Nuisance;" and the contributions of benevolent travelers form no inconsiderable addition to the home stock. The night-soil of the cities is almost wholly saved. The conveyances which bring in supplies take back an equivalent in the shape of the remains of what has served its purpose as food, and the unavoidable waste is more than compensated by that derived from fish, which enters largely into consumption. Thus Yeddo, instead of exhausting the narrow region from which it is fed actually increases its fertility. Our own great cities apparently do the same; but it is at the expense of the distant regions from which their supplies are mainly drawn. Every bushel of grain, every pound of meat which is sent from Illinois or Ohio to New York and Boston, is so much abstracted from the total capacity of the soil, which, rich as it is, must under our system of agriculture be in time

We have reproduced from Sir Rutherford Alcock's work a series of Japanese pictures, which present some of the most striking aspects of Japanese rural life. In one a peasant and his wife are returning at evening from their work. The husband carries suspended from a neckyoke a couple of huge tubs which he had evidently borne out in the morning full of unsavory fertilizing matter, while the wife trudges contentedly along by his side, burdened only with a small tea-kettle.

This would indicate that

the common people have so far advanced in civilization that the stronger sex take upon themselves the hard labor of life. This pleasing idea is somewhat marred by a companion picture, representing a fisherman and his family returning home. Paterfamilias is burdened only with his light rod and bait-bag, while his spouse balances upon her head the basket containing the spoils of the day, steadying it with one hand, the other supporting the youngest hope of the family; a half-grown lad, who might have been better employed in helping his

The whole country is intersected with a fine net-work of hills, rising high enough to furnish a temperate climate, while the valleys beAnother pic-low present that of the northern tropics, coverture shows him pressing down the seed with an ing the ground with a rich profusion of rice, ordinary garden-roller. Another shows an in- cotton, yams, sweet potatoes, and tobacco. Ingenious manner of