matter of human labor, which is the one thing they have in excess.
By thoroughly preparing the seed bed, fertilizing highly and giving
the most careful attention, they are able to grow on one acre,
during 30 to 50 days, enough plants to occupy ten acres and in the
mean time on the other nine acres crops are maturing, being
harvested and the fields being fitted to receive the rice when it is
ready for transplanting, and in effect this interval of time is
added to their growing season.

Silk culture is a great and, in some ways, one of the most
remarkable industries of the Orient. Remarkable for its magnitude;
for having had its birthplace apparently in oldest China at least
2700 years B. C.; for having been laid on the domestication of a
wild insect of the woods; and for having lived through more than
4000 years, expanding until a million-dollar cargo of the product
has been laid down on our western coast and rushed by special fast
express to the cast for the Christmas trade.

A low estimate of China's production of raw silk would be
120,000,000 pounds annually, and this with the output of Japan,
Korea and a small area of southern Manchuria, would probably exceed
150,000,000 pounds annually, representing a total value of perhaps
$700,000,000, quite equaling in value the wheat crop of the United
States, but produced on less than one-eighth the area of our wheat
fields.

The cultivation of tea in China and Japan is another of the great
industries of these nations, taking rank with that of sericulture if
not above it in the important part it plays in the welfare of the
people. There is little reason to doubt that this industry has its