[249] Nevertheless it is well not to be hasty in judgment.  On the day on which this footnote was written, April 7, 1921, I find the following items in the Daily Mail.  On page 4 the Attorney-General regrets that the law tolerates the “cruel practice” by which 30 pigeons were killed or injured at a certain pigeon-shooting competition and expresses inability to bring in legislation.  On page 5, col. 2, an M.P. is reported as mentioning a case in which a puppy had been kicked to death and as asking the Home Secretary whether the law imposing imprisonment for a short term could not be strengthened.  On the same page, col. 5, a railway porter is reported as having been fined for flinging three small calves into a farm cart by the tails.

[250] For poultry statistics, see Appendix LXVII.

[251] Before the extensive use of yofuku (foreign clothes) the dress of Japanese men and women was entirely of cotton and silk or of cotton only.  Much of the material from which yofuku are made is no doubt cotton.

[252] See Appendix LXVIII

[253] The number of cattle, which was 1,342,587 in 1916, was only 1,307,120 in 1918.  See also Appendix LXVI.

[254] For photographs and particulars of the milk sheep, see my Free Farmer in a Free State.

[255] The value of the well-bred and well-cared-for goat as a milk and manure producer is underestimated.  The problem of keeping goats in such a way that they shall not be destructive and shall yield the maximum of manure is discussed in my Case for the Goat.

[256] This question as it affects an agricultural country is discussed in A Free Farmer in a Free State.

[257] There is a consensus of scientific opinion that “non-meat eating” races such as the Japanese have longer alimentary tracts than flesh-eating Europeans.  It is difficult to be precise on the subject, an eminent Western surgeon tells me, for bowels are as contractile as worms, which at one minute measure 100 units in length and the next minute have shortened to 30.  So much depends on the state at death.

[258] On the other hand, the Japanese have taken up many new things at the point which we in the West have only recently reached.  They begin to produce milk and supply it, not in the milkman’s pail, but in sterilised bottles.  They abandon candles and lamps and, practically skipping gas, adopt electric light or power.  The capital invested in electric enterprises in 1919 was about 700 million yen or seven times that invested in gas.

[259] There is one blameless form of stock keeping which is developing in Hokkaido.  Bees, which have still to make their way in Old Japan, are now 6,000 hives strong in the northern island, though a start was made only six or seven years ago.

[260] It is illustrative of the extent to which pickle is consumed in Japan that a family in Sapporo was found to have eaten no fewer than 283 daikon in a year.