Page:Farmers of forty centuries.djvu/418

 the two beautiful views reproduced in Figs. 151 and 152 were taken.

At the experiment station it was learned that within the prefecture of Nara, having a population of 558,314, and 107,574 acres of cultivated land, two-thirds of this was in paddy rice. Within the province there are also about one thousand irrigation reservoirs with an average depth of eight feet. The rice fields receive 16.32 inches of irrigation water in addition to the rain.

Of the uncultivated hill lands, some 2500 acres contribute green manure for fertilization of fields. Reference has been made to the production of compost for fertilizers on page 211. The amount recommended in this prefecture as a yearly application for two crops grown is:

These amounts, on the basis of the table, p. 214, are nearly sufficient for a crop of thirty bushels of wheat, followed by one of thirty bushels of rice, the phosphorus being in excess and the potassium not quite enough, supposing none to be derived from other sources.

At the Nara hotel, one of the beautiful Japanese inns where we stopped, our room opened upon a second story veranda from which one looked down upon a beautiful, tiny lakelet, some twenty by eighty feet, within a diminutive park scarcely more than one hundred by two hundred feet, and the lakelet had its grassy, rocky banks over-hung with trees and shrubs planted in all the wild disorder and beauty of nature; bamboo, willow, fir, pine, cedar, red-leaved maple, catalpa, with other kinds, and through these, along the shore, wound a woodsy, well trodden, narrow footpath leading from the inn to a half hidden cottage apparently quarters for the maids, as they were frequently passing to and fro. A suggestion of how such wild beauty is brought right to the very doors in Japan may be gained