The 50 acres of elm-studded land in which the University buildings stand are a surprise, for the elm grows nowhere else in Japan but Hokkaido.[240] The extent of the University's landed possessions is also unexpected. There are two training farms of 185 and 260 acres respectively, beautifully kept botanic gardens, a tract of 15,000 acres on which there are already more than a thousand tenants, and 300,000 acres of forests in Hokkaido, Saghalien and Korea. Four or five times as many students as can be admitted offer themselves at Sapporo. There is in Hokkaido an agricultural and rural life conceived for a country where stock may be kept and a farmer does not need to practise the superintensive farming of Old Japan. At the first University farm I looked over it was clear that not only American but Swedish, German and Swiss farming practice had had its influence. No longer was the farmer content with mattocks, hoes and flails. A silo dominated the scene, and maize, eaten from the cob in Old Japan, was a crop for stock.[241] I also noticed crops of oats and rye. I arrived in Hokkaido in the last week of August in a linen suit and was glad to put on a woollen one. By September 29 it was snowing. Snow-shoes were shown among the products of the island at the prefectural exhibition. Canadians have likened the climate of Hokkaido to that of Manitoba. Hokkaido is on the line of the Great Lakes, but the cold current from the North makes comparisons of this sort ineffective. It is only in southern Hokkaido that apples will grow. Thirty years ago wolves and bear were shot two miles from Sapporo and bear may still be found within ten miles. The sea fisheries of Hokkaido are valuable but agriculture and forestry are greater money makers. Even without forestry agriculture is well ahead of factory industry, which is also eclipsed by mining. Industry is aided by the presence of coal. Among manufactures, brewing stands out even more conspicuously than wood-pulp making or canning. One of the three best-known beers in Japan comes from Hokkaido.[242] In contrast with the situation in Old Japan, where the land is half paddy and half upland, there is in Hokkaido only a ninth of the cultivated land under rice.[243] When I was in Hokkaido there were 600,000 _chō_ under cultivation, a hundred and fifty times more than there were in 1873. The line marking the northern or rather the north-eastern limit of rice shows roughly a third of the island on the northern and eastern coasts to be at present beyond the skill of rice growers. There is always uncertainty with the rice crop in Hokkaido. As the growing period is short, half the rice is not transplanted but sown direct in the paddies. A bad crop is expected once in seven years. In such a season there is no yield and even the straw is not good.