CHINA'S METHODS.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 406, 21 October 1911, Page 6

CHINA'S METHODS.

The? kectinc-cs ol' ttu-sir.for irtciicc in many o! China is a prime factor in producing 1 h'. > political discontent tlr.;t- ia ikr'.'.ng expression at the present time in revolut ion. Professor E. A. Iloss tell,-; the rentier of the Century that in two-thirds of China the traveller canfimi no vacant ground on which he can pitch a tent. There is no roadside, no common land, no plantation or orchard. The whole fane of the country i 3 cultivated like a Dutch garden, the roads being mere narrow tracks through the crops, while dividing fences, which would cause a waste of room, art: practically unknown. Osly agricultural methods of an extraordinarily painstaking chaiacter have saved the soil from exhaustion. No natural resource is too trifling to be turned to account by China's teeming millios. The sea is raked and strained for edible plunder. Seaweed and kelp find a place in the larder. Enormous quantities of little shellfish, each one no bigger than a threepenny piece, are opened and made to yield a food that finds its way far inland. The fungus that springs up in the grass after a rain is eaten, and, potato vines are fried for the poor man's table. "The roadside ditches are baled out for the sake of fishes no longer than one's finger," says Professor Ross. "Great panniers of strawberries, halt; of them still green, are collected in the mountain ravines and offered in the markets. No weed or stalk escapes the bamboo rake of the autumnal fuel-gatherer. Tne grass tufts on the rough slopes are dug up by the roots. The sickle reaps the grain close to the ground, for straw and chaff are needed to burn under the rice-kettle. The leaves of the trees are a crop to be carefully gathered. One never sees a rotting stump or a mossy log." The silkworms are eaten after the cocoon has been unwound from them. Domestic animals of all kinds become butcher's meat in their old age, and in Canton dressed cats and rats are exposed for sale. Professor Ross noticed hat his boatmen cleaned and ate the head 3, feet and entrails of the fowls used by the cook. Pressure of population, in fact, has brought about a condition of grinding poverty scarcely to be under-:-tood in more favoured countries.