der the shade of some of these wooded areas, yielding under favorable conditions at the rate of $100 per acre.
The forest covered area in Japan exclusive of Formosa and Karafuto, amounts to a total of 54,196,728 acres, less than twenty millions of which are in private holdings, the balance belonging to the state and to the Imperial Crown.
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Fig. 87.—Japanese fuel coming down from the wooded hills.
In all of these countries there has been an extensive
general use of materials other than wood for building
purposes and very many of the substitutes for lumber are
products grown on the cultivated fields. The use of rice
straw for roofing, as seen in the Hakone village, Fig. 8, is
very general throughout the rice growing districts, and
even the sides of houses may be similarly thatched, as was
observed in the Canton delta region, such a construction
being warm for winter and cool for summer. The life
of these thatched roofs, however, is short and they must
be renewed as often as every three to five years but the
