the last generations of more than forty unbroken centuries of farmers who, with brain and brawn, have successfully and continuously sustained large families on small areas without impoverishing their soil.  The next illustration is from a photograph taken in one of these fields.  We astonished the old farmer by asking the privilege of holding his plow through one round in his little field, but he granted the privilege readily.  Our furrow was not as well turned as his, nor as well as we could have done with a two-handled Oliver or John Deere, but it was better than the old man had expected and won his respect.

This plow had a good steel point, as a separate, blunt, V-shaped piece, and a moldboard of cast steel with a good twist which turned the soil well.  The standard and sole were of wood and at the end of the beam was a block for gauging the depth of furrow.  The cost of this plow, to the farmer, was $2.15, gold, and when the day’s work is done it is taken home on the shoulders, even though the distance may be a mile or more, and carefully housed.  Chinese history states that the plow was invented by Shennung, who lived 2737-2697 B. C. and “taught the art of agriculture and the medical use of herbs”.  He is honored as the “God of Agriculture and Medicine.”

Through my interpreter we learned that there were twelve in this man’s family, which he maintained on fifteen mow of land, or 2.5 acres, together with his team, consisting of a cow and small donkey, besides feeding two pigs.  This is at the rate of 192 people, 16 cows, 16 donkeys and 32 pigs on a forty-acre farm; and of a population density equivalent to 3072 people, 256 cows, 256 donkeys and 512 swine per square mile of cultivated field.

On another small holding we talked with the farmer standing at the well in Fig. 27, where he was irrigating a little piece of barley 30 feet wide and 138 feet long.  He owned and was cultivating but one and two-thirds acres of land and yet there were ten in his family and he kept one donkey and usually one pig.  Here is a maintenance capacity at the rate of 240 people, 24 donkeys and 24 pigs on a forty-acre farm; and a population density of 3840 people, 384 donkeys and 384 pigs per square mile.  His usual annual sales in good seasons were equivalent in value to $73, gold.

In both of these cases the crops grown were wheat, barley, large and small millet, sweet potatoes and soy beans or peanuts.  Much straw braid is manufactured in the province by the women and children in their homes, and the cargo of the steamer on which we returned to Shanghai consisted almost entirely of shelled peanuts in gunny sacks and huge bales of straw braid destined for the manufacture of hats in Europe and America.

Shantung has only moderate rainfall, little more than 24 inches annually, and this fact has played an important part in determining the agricultural practices of these very old people.  In Fig. 123 is a closer view than Fig. 27 of the farmer watering his little field of barley.  The well had just been dug over eight feet deep, expressly and solely to water this one piece of grain once, after which it would be filled and the ground planted.