are leached directly to the roots where they are needed; (4) and finally the straw and soil constitute a compost where the rapid decay liberates plant food gradually and in the place where it will be most readily available.  The upper section of the illustration shows rows of eggplants very heavily mulched with coarse straw, the quantity being sufficient to act as a most effective mulch, to largely prevent the development of weeds and to serve during the rainy season as a very material fertilizer.

In growing such dry land crops as barley, beans, buckwheat or dry land rice the soil of the field is at first fitted by plowing or spading, then furrowed deeply where the rows are to be planted.  Into these furrows fertilizer is placed and covered with a layer of earth upon which the seed is planted.  When the crop is up, if a second fertilization is desired, a furrow may be made alongside each row, into which the fertilizer is sowed and then covered.  When the crop is so far matured that a second may be planted, a new furrow is made, either midway between two others or adjacent to one of them, fertilizer applied and covered with a layer of soil and the seed planted.  In this way the least time possible is lost during the growing season, all of the soil of the field doing duty in crop production.

It was our privilege to visit the Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station at Nishigahara, near Tokyo, which is charged with the leadership of the general and technical agricultural research work for the Empire.  The work is divided into the sections of agriculture, agricultural chemistry, entomology, vegetable pathology, tobacco, horticulture, stock breeding, soils, and tea manufacture, each with their laboratory equipment and research staff, while the forty-one prefectural stations and fourteen sub-stations are charged with the duty of handling all specific local, practical problems and with testing out and applying conclusions and methods suggested by the results obtained at the central station, together with the local dissemination of knowledge among the farmers of the respective prefectures.

A comprehensive soil survey of the arable lands of the Empire has been in progress since before 1893, excellent maps being issued on a scale of 1 to 100,000, or about 1.57 inch-to the mile, showing the geological formations in eight colors with subdivisions indicated by letters.  Some eleven soil types are recognized, based on physical composition and the areas occupied by these are shown by means of lines and dots in black printed over the colors.  Typical profiles of the soil to depths of three meters are printed as insets on each sheet and localities where these apply are indicated by corresponding numbers in red on the map.

Elaborate chemical and physical studies are also being made in the laboratories of samples of both soil and subsoil.  The Imperial Agricultural Experiment Station is well equipped for investigation work along many lines and that for soils is notably strong.  In Fig. 246 may be seen a portion of the large immersed cylinders which are filled with typical soils from different parts of the Empire, and Fig. 247 shows a portion of another part of their elaborate outfit for soil studies which are in progress.