There are in Japan hydraulic engineering works as remarkable in their way as any I have seen in the Netherlands. Some of these works, for example the tunnels for conducting rice-field water through considerable hills, have been the work of unlettered peasants. In one place I found that 80 miles or more of irrigation was based on a canal made two centuries ago. It is good to see so many embankings of refractory streams and excavations of river beds commemorated by slabs recording the public services of the men who, often at their own charges, carried out these works of general utility. In various parts of the country I came upon smallholders who had reached a high degree of proficiency in the fine art of dwarfing trees. One day I stopped to speak with a farmer who by this art had added 1,000 yen a year to his agricultural income. A thirty-years-old maple was one of his triumphs. Another was a pomegranate about a foot and a half high. It was in flower and would bear fruit of ordinary size. The wonder of dwarfing is wrought, as is now well known, by cramping the roots in the pot and by extremely skilful pruning, manuring and watering. While we drank tea some choice specimens were displayed before a screen of unrelieved gold. In the room in which we sat the farmer had arranged in a bowl of water with great effectiveness hydrangea, a spray of pomegranate and a cabbage. One marks the respect shown to the rural policeman. In his summer uniform of white cotton, with his flat white cap and white gloves, and an imposing sword, he looks like a naval officer, even if, as sometimes happens, his feet are in _zori_. He gets respect because of his dignified presence and sense of official duty, because of the considerable powers which he is able to exercise, because he stands for the Government, and because he is sometimes of a higher social grade than that to which policemen belong in other countries. At the Restoration many men of the samurai class did not think it beneath them to enter the new sword-wearing police force and they helped to give it a standing which has been maintained. As to the policeman being a representative of the Government, the ordinary Japanese has a way of speaking of the Government doing this or that as if the Government were irresistible power. Average Japanese do not yet conceive the Government as something which they have made and may unmake[44]. But is it likely that they should, parliamentary history, the work of their betters, being as short as it is? It is not whithout significance that the Chambers of the Diet are housed in temporary wooden buildings.