I heard of temples which were promoting rural improvement by means of lanterns. In one village the lanterns were at the service of borrowers at three different places. The inscription on the lanterns says, "Think of the mercy of Buddha who illuminates the darkness of your heart." There is written in smaller characters, "If you live half a _ri_ away you need not return this lantern." Three hundred lanterns are lost or damaged in a year, but paper lanterns are cheap. One temple has a society composed of those who have family graves in its grounds. These people "study how to get the most abundant crop." There is a prize for the best cultivated _tan_. Under this temple's auspices there is not only a co-operative credit and purchase association, a poultry society and an annual exhibition of agricultural products, but a school for nurses--they are "taught to be nurses not only physically but morally." The boys and girls of the village are invited to the temple once a month and "told a story." The youngsters are asked to come to a "learning meeting" where they must recite or exhibit something they have written or drawn; "blockheads as well as clever children are encouraged." A fund is being raised so that "a genius who may be suffering from poverty may be able to get proper education." Then there is a Women's Religious Association which aims at "the improvement, necessary from a religious point of view, in the home and of agricultural business." Sermons are given to 500 women monthly. The society sent comfort bags, containing letters, tooth-brushes and sweets, to soldiers at the taking of Tsingtao. A similar organisation for men had for thirteen years listened to a monthly lecture by a well-known priest. It sends occasional subscriptions outside the village. Finally, this praiseworthy temple issues every month 20,000 copies of a 4-1/2-sen magazine. The Shinto shrines of the prefecture have in all a little more than 40 _chō_ of land. Someone has hit on the plan of getting the agricultural societies of the county and villages to provide the priests with rice seed of superior varieties, the crop of which can be exchanged with farmers for common rice. This is done on a profitable basis, because the shrines exchange unpolished rice for polished. A _gō_ of seed rice makes only about .5 _gō_ when husked.