[in Japanese]

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The author has investgated the relation between use and possession of the woodlands in Ryujuji-mura, a village in the Oome forestry region.
1. Agriculture was the most important means of living for the vill agers since early in the recent era. But the average managing area was too small, 32 se 18 bu (0. 80 acre) even at the beginning, and later 35 se 25 bu (0.88 acre, ), and the fields cultivated annually were only 47%. The land productivity remained at low level, and the crops chosen for selfsuffice were such as barley, foxtail millet, barnyard, millet, soybeans, azuki beans, buckwheat, wheat, taros and vegetables. Most of the villagrers had to work to live, women weaving textile, men working as wage-labourers in lumbering. Under such circumstances, the middle class of the peasants was decomposed into the tipper and lower classes, though gradually.
In spite of the fact compact of the village community remained and exerted its influence ever since.
2. The farmers of the upper class possessed the Kirihata, which place were turned into woodlands, and began to engage in forestry. But the small lands made it dififcult for the upper class to become large landowners, except they obtained the mura-yama, a kind of common of waste. Some of them became timber-merchants through the connection with the merchants in Yedo. Peasants of the lower class engaged themselves in lumbering, transporting rafts, for their surplus labours. The employers of them were from the upper class who were on leading position in the village community. One could find wage-labour in farmers' slack season, but the compact of the village community remained as it was, on the contrary it confirmed the social order.
Due to the tendency of merchandising timber, people began to use the commons as pastures, forests for fuel and timber, and permitted to establish the forests of sharing yields. But for the lower class it was out of economic capacity to manage lumbering forests for a long time, because they were too poor. So the priviledge to carry on the business was q, to the upper class.
After the Meij i Restoration, the new government put in force the choson-sei, and made villages establish the econmic foundations (village forests), readjusting the commons. This enabled the lower class to sell the rights to share yields of the forests. While the tipper class monopolized the rights, and they became woodland-owners and lumberingenterprisers.

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[in Japanese]

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The rice-field area in the western section of the city of Kumamoto, was buried under a layer. of mud 30 cm thick on the average, by the overflow of the River Shirakawa in the afternoon of June, 26, 1953.
Owing to ill drainage, this area had been under water for one week or more, maximum depth being calculated to 300cm. The author investigated the cracks in those sheets of mud.
The terrain of the area had been as i t was when wheat, the alternate crop of rice, was harvested, with 80cm intervals between 40 to 42cm furrow (Fig. 2). The inclinations found on the surface of the mud were, from over furrow to the groove, 2 to 10 degrees.
The cracks were various in form. They could be assorted into five patterns (Fig. 3). Pattern E was seen where rice had been planted and harvested. The widths of cracks are here put into four grades (Figs. 4 and 5) in each pattern. Cracks of the four of patterns (A-D) were to be found around each of numerous centers.
In perpendicular sections, clayey ingredients are plenty at the top. Drying being quicker atop, cracks are found to have started at the surface as the mud began to contract and cohere; the gaps are widest at the top.
The greater part of the mud over the area is judged to have settled in the first several hours of the inundation, the rest being added in the following week when the area was under water. It was observed that cracks of the first and second grades of width had first took place, while the mud was considerably wet, starting at the top, grades 3rd and 4th following them as drying went on.

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