Vegetables are carried through the winter in such earth cellars as are seen in Fig. 88, page 161, these being covered after they are filled. As to the price of labor in this part of China, we learned through Consul-General Williams that a master mechanic may receive 50 cents, Mexican, per day, and a journeyman 18 cents, or at a rate of 21.5 cents and 7.75 cents, gold. Farm laborers receive from $20 to $30, Mexican, or $8.60 to $12.90, gold, per year, with food, fuel and presents which make a total of $17.20 to $21.50. This is less for the year than we pay for a month of probably less efficient labor. There is relatively little child labor in China and this perhaps should be expected when adult labor is so abundant and so cheap. XVI MANCHURIA AND KOREA The 39th parallel of latitude lies just south of Tientsin; followed westward, it crosses the toe of Italy's boot, leads past Lisbon in Portugal, near Washington and St. Louis and to the north of Sacramento on the Pacific. We were leaving a country with a mean July temperature of 80 deg F., and of 21 deg in January, but where two feet of ice may form; a country where the eighteen year mean maximum temperature is 103.5 deg and the mean minimum 4.5 deg; where twice in this period the thermometer recorded 113 deg above zero, and twice 7 deg below, and yet near the coast and in the latitude of Washington; a country where the mean annual rainfall is 19.72 inches and all but 3.37 inches falls in June, July, August and September. We had taken the 5:40 A. M. Imperial North-China train, June 17th, to go as far northward as Chicago,--to Mukden in Manchuria, a distance by rail of some four hundred miles, but all of the way still across the northward extension of the great Chinese coastal plain. Southward, out from the coldest quarter of the globe, where the mean January temperature is more than 40 deg below zero, sweep northerly winds which bring to Mukden a mean January temperature only 3 deg above zero, and yet there the July temperature averages as high as 77 deg and there is a mean annual rainfall of but 18.5 inches, coming mostly in the summer, as at Tientsin. Although the rainfall of the northern extension of China's coastal plain is small, its efficiency is relatively high because of its most favorable distribution and the high summer temperatures. In the period of early growth, April, May and June, there are 4.18 inches; but in the period of maximum growth, July and August, the rainfall is 11.4 inches; and in the ripening period, September and October, it is 3.08 inches, while during the rest of the year but 1.06 inch falls. Thus most of the rain comes at the time when the crops require the greatest daily consumption and it is least in mid-winter, during the period of little growth.