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288 EAST ASIA.
the inhabitants of the empire, but also yields considerable supplies for the export
trade. Without the chemical knowledge and perfected implements of Europeans,
the Chinese peasant has gradually become acquainted with the quality of the land
and the requirements of the cultivated plants. He understands the necessary
rotation of crops on the same soil ; regulates the due proportion of lime, phosphates,
ashes, animal and vegetable remains, and other manures ; and supplements the
rudeness of his instruments with manual skill. He carefully weeds the ground,
and irrigates it by a thousand different contrivances, all kinds of pumps and
Fig. 140. RELATIVE IMPORTANCE OP THE CHOPS IN THE CHINESE PROVINCES.
Scale 1 : 30,000,000.
V -. :'"'/' ft
-x^ rl
EoFG. 100: ISO!
. GOO Miles.
hydraulic wheels, worked by the hand, animals, or the wind. The system of tillage
thus resembles market gardening rather than the broad methods of cultivation
common in Europe. In the fertile plains, especially about Shanghai, a single
acre suffices for the support of seven or eight persons, and before the country was
tin-own open to foreign trade it yielded sufficient for all the wants of the people.
There are, moreover, vast tracts still uncultivated, and according to the official
returns for the beginning of this century, while the land under tillage amounted to
125,000,000 acres, Shantung was the only province
soil was actually cultivated.
40
where more than half of the