Mississippi and north Louisiana, has two rice harvests, and gardeners at Nagasaki grow three crops, each year.  The gardener and his family work about five tan, or a little less than one and one-quarter acres, realizing an annual return of some $250 per acre.  To maintain these earnings fertilizers are applied rated worth $60 per acre, divided between the three crops, the materials used being largely the wastes of the city, animal manure, mud from the drains, fuel ashes and sod, all composted together.  If this expenditure for fertilizers appears high it must be remembered that nearly the whole product is sold and that there are three crops each year.  Such intense culture requires a heavy return if large yields are maintained.  Good agricultural lands were here valued at 300 yen per tan, approximately $600 per acre.

When returning toward Moji to visit the Agricultural Experiment Station of Fukuoka prefecture, the rice along the first portion of the route was standing about eight inches above the water.  Large lotus ponds along the way occupied areas not readily drained, and the fringing fields between the rice paddies and the untilled hill lands were bearing squash, maize, beans and Irish potatoes.  Many small areas had been set to sweet potatoes on close narrow ridges, the tops of which were thinly strewn with green grass, or sometimes with straw or other litter, for shade and to prevent the soil from washing and baking in the hot sun after rains.  At Kitsu we passed near Government salt works, for the manufacture of salt by the evaporation of sea water, this industry in Japan, as in China, being a Government monopoly.

Many bundles of grass and other green herbage were collected along the way, gathered for use in the rice fields.  In other cases the green manure had already been spread over the flooded paddies and was being worked beneath the surface, as seen in Fig. 216.  At this time the hill lands were clothed in the richest, deepest green but the tree growth was nowhere large except immediately about temples, and was usually in distinct small areas with sharp boundaries occasioned by differences in age.  Some tracts had been very recently cut; others were in their second, third or fourth years; while others still carried a growth of perhaps seven to ten years.  At one village many bundles of the brush fuel had been gathered from an adjacent area, recently cleared.

A few fields were still bearing their crop of soy beans planted in February between rows of grain, and the green herbage was being worked into the flooded soil, for the crop of rice.  Much compost, brought to the fields, was stacked with layers of straw between, laid straight, the alternate courses at right angles, holding the piles in rectangular form with vertical sides, some of which were four to six feet high and the layers of compost about six inches thick.

Just before reaching Tanjiro, a region is passed where orchards of the candleberry tree occupy high leveled areas between rice paddies, after the manner described for the mulberry orchards in Chekiang, China.  These trees, when seen from a distance, have quite the appearance of our apple orchards.