not kill a horse and sell it for meat." The average
price of a two-year-old not thus illicitly vended was 70 yen. (It was
a little less in the next prefecture of Iwate and in Hokkaido.) Half
of the stallions belonging to the "Bureau of Horse Politics" of the
Ministry of Agriculture were bought in Aomori.

The farmers by the lake that we passed on our way south were described
as "very poor," for their soil was barren and their climate bad. Their
crops were only a third of what could be raised in another part of the
prefecture. The agriculture of all the prefectures through which I now
journeyed south to Tokyo suffer from the cold temperature of the sea.
The east-coast temperature drops in winter to 7 degrees below
freezing.[167] "Living is more and more difficult," said someone to
me. "The number of tenants increases because farmers get into debt and
have to sell their land. Millet and buckwheat are much eaten. Although
the temperature is 5 per cent. colder in Hokkaido, the people do worse
here because our soil is barren and there is no profitable winter
occupation like lumbering. Only 10 per cent. of the rural population
save anything. In bad times 65 per cent. of the families get into
debt."

At Morioka in Iwate prefecture I visited the excellent higher
agricultural college, where there were 300 students. The competition
for places, as at every educational institution in Japan, was keen.
The number who sat at the last entrance examinations--the average age
was twenty--was 317, of whom only 80 got in. There were 15 professors
and 10 assistants. The charge to students was 300 yen for a year of
ten months. The annual cost of the college to the Government was
70,000 yen. Of the foreign volumes among the 20,000 books in the
library 50 per cent. were German, 30 per cent. English and 20 per
cent. American.

An apiary of a single skep in a roped-off enclosure was an
illustration of unfamiliarity with bees. It seemed strange to find
that in this up-to-date and efficient institution the biggest
implement for cutting grass which was in use, a sickle of course, had
a blade no longer than 8 inches. Hung up at the back of a shed I
noticed a rusty scythe. When I tried to show what it could do it was
suggested that the implement was "too heavy, too difficult and too
dangerous."

Iwate is the poorest of the northern prefectures, for bad weather so
often comes when the rice is in flower. As many as 40 per cent. of the
people were