The utilization of mountain pastures for stock raising is almost universal.  In the arid highlands of Central Asia, it is the essential supplement to the pastoral nomadism of the steppes and deserts, and to the limited sedentary agriculture found along the irrigated piedmont slopes.  Here and elsewhere the animal raised varies widely-the llama and vicuna in Peru, which thrive best at 10,000 to 13,000 feet elevation, and multiply rapidly on the ichu or coarse grass which clothes the slopes of the higher Andes up to snow line; sheep, goats, yaks and herds of dzo, a useful hybrid between yak and cow, in the highland districts of Sze Chuan.  Here the Mantze mountaineers lock their houses and leave their villages deserted, while they camp with their herds on the high pastures at 10,000 feet or more.[1314] Only economical, ingenious Japan has failed to develop stock raising, though mountains comprise two-thirds of its area.  The explanation has often been sought in Buddhism, which inhibits the use of animal food; but this religious rule probably found ready acceptance in Japan, just because the paucity of animal food made its observance easy, for the fish industry of the Empire never suffered from the inhibition.  The reason is probably to be sought elsewhere.  The native grass of Japan, which relentlessly crowds out all imported grazing crops, is a bamboo grass with sharp, hard, serrated edges, and is said to cut the entrails of horses and sheep.[1315]

[Sidenote:  Haymaking in high mountains.]

While the high pastures are ample for the summer feeding, the chief problem of mountain stock-farmers is to secure feed for the winter support of their animals.  This taxes their industry and ingenuity to the utmost.  While the herdsmen are away tending their charges on the heights, the rest of the population are kept busy at home, getting fodder for the six or seven months of stall-feeding.  This includes the cultivation of hardy crops like oats, rye and barley, which will mature at a great altitude, hay-making and collecting twigs and even leaves for the less fastidious goats.  In Switzerland as in Norway the art of mowing has reached its highest pitch.  Grass only three inches high is cut thrice yearly.  The Norwegian peasant gathers a small hay harvest from the roofs of his house and barns, and from the edges of the highways.  In Switzerland not a spear of grass escapes.  In places inaccessible to cattle and goats, the peasant gathers hay by the handful with crampons on his feet, generally from the ledges of cliffs.  He stacks it in one spot, and brings it down to the valley by sledge in winter.  He is the Wildheuer or wild hay gatherer.  His life is so dangerous, that the law permits only one Wildheuer to a family.[1316] In high Alpine cantons this office is the privilege of the poor.[1317] The traveler in Norway frequently sees huge bundles of hay sliding down to the valley on wires stretched from some high point on the precipitous fiord wall.  This represents the harvest from isolated spots or from the field of the summer shepherd.  In the vicinity of every saeter hut, a plot of ground is fenced in, enriched with the manure gathered during the summer, and utilized to grow fine nourishing grass, which is mown and transported down to the valley farm.[1318] Here economy of vegetative resources reaches its climax.