Although there is no estimating the forthcoming rice crops in Japan, announces the Agricultural Laboratory, it is expected that they will exceed the average of 55,000,000 Koku. Last year, though the weather was not very favourable, there was the almost unprecedentedly rich harvest of €0.800,000 koku, which the Laboratory ascribes to the labour expended on the crop by the famers, who were then well off on account of the high price of rice. But it is not to be expected that in ihe coming autumn the crops will turn out so good as last year even if they escape the dangers of the season now drawing near, when natural calamity is often ¢xperienced, for there are indications that the prevalent economic chaos has had a financially adverse effect upon the farmers ud compelled them to economize in the use of fertilizers, ete.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.