nearly two acres of improved farm land for each fowl. We have no statistics regarding the number of fowl in China or the number of eggs produced but the total is very large and she exports to Japan. The large boat load of eggs seen in Fig. 97 had just arrived from the country, coming into Shanghai in one of her canals.
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Fig. 97.—Boatload of 150 baskets of eggs on Soochow creek, Shanghai, China.
Besides applying canal mud directly to the fields in the
ways described there are other very extensive practices of
composting it with organic matter of one or another kind
and of then using the compost on the fields. The next
three illustrations show some of the steps and something
of the tremendous labor of body, willingly and cheerfully
incurred, and something of the forethought practiced, that
homes may be maintained and that grandparents, parents,
wives and children need neither starve nor beg. We had
reached a place seen in Fig. 98. where eight bearers were
moving winter compost to a recently excavated pit in an
adjoining field shown in Fig. 99.
Four months before the camera fixed the activity shown, men had brought waste from the stables of Shanghai fifteen miles by water, depositing it upon the canal bank between
