s of soap. The usual thing at a silk factory is for the
pupae, which are exposed to view when the silk is unrolled from the
scalded cocoons, to lie about in horrid heaps until they are sold as
manure or carp food. The professor declared that his product was equal
to a third of the total weight of the pupae utilised, and was sure that
it could be sold at a fifteenth of the price of Western beef essences.
The Director of the College had tried the product with his breakfast
for a fortnight and avowed that during the experiment he was never so
perky.

It was a pleasure to look into the well-kept dormitories of the
students, where there was evidence, in books, pictures and athletic
material, of a strenuous life. The young men are made fit not only by
_judo_, fencing, archery, tennis and general athletics, but by being
sent up the mountains on Sundays. The men are kept so hard that at the
open fencing contest twice a year the visitors are usually beaten. The
director quoted to me Roosevelt's "Sweat and be saved."

From men we went to machines and mulberries. I inspected all sorts of
hot chambers for killing cocoons. I saw, in rooms draped in black
velvet like the pictured scenes at a beheading, silk testing for
lustre and colour. I gazed with respect on many kinds of winding and
weaving machinery. Then, going out into the experiment fields, I
strode through more varieties of mulberry than I had imagined to
exist. There are supposed to be 500 sorts in the country but many are
no doubt duplicates. The varieties differ so much in shape and texture
of leaf that the novice would not take some of them for mulberries.

It was held that it would not be difficult to increase the mulberry
area in Japan by another quarter of a million acres. The yield of
leaves might be raised by 3,300 lbs. per acre if the right sort of
bushes were always grown and the right sort of treatment were given to
them and to the soil. As to the additional labour needed for an
extended sericulture, the annual increase in the population of Japan
would provide it. I was told that "the technics of sericulture are
sure to improve." It would be easy to raise the yield 2 _kwan_ per egg
card for the whole country. Within a seven-year period the production
of cocoons per egg card had become 20 per cent. better. The talk was
of doubling the present yield of cocoons. The "proper encouragement"
needed for doubling the production of cocoons was more technical
instructio