order that mushrooms might be grown on
and around their trunks. There is a large consumption of these
tree-grown mushrooms in Japan and an export trade worth two and a half
million yen.

[Illustration: CULTIVATION TO THE HILL-TOPS.]

An inscribed stone by our path was a reminder of the belief in
"mountain maidens." They have the undoubted merit of not being "so
peevish as fairies." At another stone, before which was a pile of
small stones, a farmer told us that when a traveller threw a stone
on the heap he "left behind his tiredness."

[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS, MEASURES AND MACHINES, AND A BALE OF RICE
The photograph was taken in Aichi-ken. p. 73]

In the first house we came to we found a young widow turning bowls
with power from a water-wheel. She could finish 400 bowls in a day and
got from one to five sen apiece. She said that she had often wished to
see a foreigner. Like nearly all the girls and women of the hills, she
wore close-fitting blue cotton trousers.

We descended to a kind of prairie which had a tree here and there and
roughly wooded hills on either side. This brought us to the problem of
the wise method of dealing with the enormous wood-bearing areas of the
country, the timber crop of which is so irregular in quality. Japan
requires many more scientifically planned forests. As coal is not in
domestic use, however, large quantities of cheap wood are needed for
burning and for charcoal making. The demand for hill pasture is also
increasing. How shall the claims of good timber, good firewood, good
charcoal-making material and good pasture be reconciled? In the county
through which we were passing--a county which, owing to its large
consumption of wood fuel, needs relatively little charcoal--the
charcoal output was worth as much as 35,000 yen a year.

We saw "buckwheat in full bloom as white as snow," as the Chinese poem
says. At a farmhouse there was a box fixed on a barn wall. It was for
communications for the police from persons who desired to make their
suggestions for the public welfare privately.

Towards evening, when we had done about twenty miles, I managed to
twist an ankle. Happily I had the chance of a ride. It was on the back
of a dour-looking mare which was accompanied by her foal and tied by a
halter to the saddle of a led pack-horse which was carrying two large
boxes. Thus impressively I did several miles in descending darkness
and across the rocky beds of two rivers. The horse of th