Japan's production of fertilizing material, regularly prepared and
applied to the land annually, amounts to more than 4.5 tons per acre
of cultivated field exclusive of the commercial fertilizers
purchased. Between Shanhaikwan and Mukden in Manchuria we passed, on
June 18th, thousands of tons of the dry highly nitrified compost
soil recently carried into the fields and laid down in piles where
it was waiting to be "fed to the crops."

It was not until 1888, and then after a prolonged war of more than
thirty years, generaled by the best scientists of all Europe, that
it was finally conceded as demonstrated that leguminous plants
acting as hosts for lower organisms living on their roots are
largely responsible for the maintenance of soil nitrogen, drawing it
directly from the air to which it is returned through the processes
of decay. But centuries of practice had taught the Far East farmers
that the culture and use of these crops are essential to enduring
fertility, and so in each of the three countries the growing of
legumes in rotation with other crops very extensively for the
express purpose of fertilizing the soil is one of their old, fixed
practices.

Just before, or immediately after the rice crop is harvested, fields
are often sowed to "clover" (Astragalus sinicus) which is allowed to
grow until near the next transplanting time when it is either turned
under directly, or more often stacked along the canals and saturated
while doing so with soft mud dipped from the bottom of the canal.
After fermenting twenty or thirty days it is applied to the field.
And so it is literally true that these old world farmers whom we
regard as ignorant, perhaps because they do not ride sulky plows as
we do, have long included legumes in their crop rotation, regarding