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This plan, however, was of necessity somewhat disregarded, because of local ignorance and prejudice, and because of lack of facilities in rural communities for corporate farming, so that the State farms have been forced, to a great extent, to devote most of their time to the work of practical application and model farming, to the neglect of theoretical investigation and original research. With the growth of education this drawback is coming to be less and less of a factor, and the Head Farm and its branches have begun to revert to the original plan.

Since 1899 the Head Farm has been divided into six departments—namely, seed and saplings, agricultural chemistry, entomology, vegetable physiology, and general affairs. Later were added the two departments of tobacco and horticulture, while the compilation of reports has been brought to a high state of efficiency.

Apart from State farms, there are local experimental farms, maintained at local expense, and chiefly devoted to practical application of model farming. Of these, there are at present some thirty-seven scattered throughout the country, which, added to thirty-eight State farms, makes a total of seventy-five centres of agricultural experiment and instruction, independent of the farms maintained by subprefectural districts, where the work is simpler, and of lesser experimental farms established by towns or villages, or by organizations of farmers’ sons.

Rice being the staple product, and requiring a great amount of moisture, the art of irrigation has been much studied.

The consumption of fruit in Japan has always been limited, the cause being that the ordinary foodstuffs of the masses contain such a proportion of water as to leave no desire for fruit. However that may be, the fact is that fruit-growing is on the increase, large quantities now being exported to Siberia, and, rather oddly, to that land of fruit, America. The variety is extensive, including the orange family, which embraces mandarins, lemons, prunellos, etc., and apples, pears, cherries, bananas, pine-apples, etc.

Silk holds the balance of Japan’s foreign trade.

Sericulture, or the art of rearing silkworms, dates apparently from the ‘Age of the Gods’ in Japan. Coming down to the ‘Age of Man,’ however, we find that the industry had