k--should be
cultivated for food. As a pickle burdock is eatable, but lotus and
some unfamiliar tuberous plants are pleasant food resembling in
flavour boiled chestnuts. _Konnyaku_ (_hydrosme rivieri_), a near
relative of the arum lily, is produced to the weight of 11 million
_kwan_--a _kwan_ is roughly 8-1/4 lbs.[40] The yield of burdock is
about 44 million _kwan_. The chief of all vegetables is the giant
radish, of which 7-1/4 million _kwan_ are grown. Taro yields about 150
million _kwan_. Foreigners usually like the young sprouts taken from
the roots of the bamboo, a favourite Japanese vegetable.

This is as convenient a place as any to speak of an important
agricultural fact, the enormous amount of filth worked into the
paddies. As is well known, hardly any of the night soil of Japan is
wasted. Japanese agriculture depends upon it. Formerly the night soil
was removed from the houses after being emptied into a pair of tubs
which the peasant carried from a yoke. Such yoke-carried tubs are
still seen, but are chiefly employed in carrying the substance to the
paddies. The tubs which are taken to dwellings are now mostly borne on
light two-wheeled handcarts which carry sometimes four and sometimes
six. A farmer will push or pull his manure cart from a town ten or
twelve miles off. It is difficult to leave or enter a town without
meeting strings of manure carts. The men who haul the carts get
together for company on their tedious journey. They seem insensible to
the concentrated odour. Often the wife or son or daughter may be seen
pushing behind a cart. There is a certain amount of transportation by
horse-drawn frame carts, carrying a dozen or sixteen tubs, and by
boats. I was told of a city of half a million inhabitants which had
thirty per cent. of its night soil taken ten miles away. The work was
undertaken by a co-operative society which paid the municipality the
large sum of 70,000 yen a year. The removal of night soil, its storage
in the fields in sunken butts and concrete ciste

William Babington Maxwell (18661938) was a British novelist. He was a son of novelist Mary Elizabeth Braddon. Though nearly 50 years old at the outbreak of the First World War, he was accepted as a lieutenant in the Royal Fusiliers and served in France until 1917.

Cyrus Townsend Brady (December 20, 1861 January 24, 1920) was a journalist, historian and adventure writer. His most well-known work is Indian Fights and Fighters. He was born in Allegheny, Pennsylvania, and graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy in 1883. He was also a deacon in the Episcopal church. His first wife was Clarissa Guthrie, who died in 1890. His second wife was Mary Barrett.

Rebecca Sophia Clarke (1833-1906), also known as Sophie May, was an American author of childrens fiction. Using her nieces and nephews as inspiration, she wrote realistic stories about children. She wrote 45 books between 1860 and 1903. The most popular being the Little Prudy books. She lived most of her life in her native town of Norridgewock, Maine, where she lived out her life with her sister, who was also a successful author.