also occur in China, and about 100 in Great Britain. In a hurried visit to Fuji-san, one of these gentlemen obtained forty-four species, besides observing a number of others. Among these were three species of thrushes and two of flycatchers, all good songsters; and he could not but remark how delightful was the chorus of birds in the early morning. In the higher altitudes, especially in the mountain ranges around Hida, I have myself often been charmed with the notes of the lark, the cuckoo, and the uguisu, or Japanese nightingale. Wildfowl are very plentiful, and at certain seasons may be seen in thousands on the castle-moats in the very heart of the city of Tôkiyô. There are myriads of crows, and hawks are also numerous. Among the specially characteristic birds are two species of pheasants peculiar to the country, the brilliant mandarin duck, the falcated teal, and the Japanese ibis. Insects are extremely abundant, at times painfully so. On the plains in summer the air is constantly filled with the ear-piercing trill of the cicada, which there supplies the too frequent lack of bird-singing. As the empire stretches through so many degrees of latitude, its various parts differ widely in climatic conditions. In the Riu Kiu and Bonin islands the climate is almost tropical, and in the Kuriles quite arctic. But here, as elsewhere, it will The Kuro Shiwo. 17 be better to leave such extremes out of consideration, and confine our attention to Japan proper. In Japan, as in our own islands, we find a more moderate climate than in the corresponding latitudes of the adjoining continent. This is due not only to its insular position, and to its containing a shallow inland sea, but also and chiefly to the warm waters of the Kuro Shiwo, or Black Stream, which originating, like our own Gulf Stream, in an equatorial current, is, partly by the rotation of the earth, and partly by the coast-formation of south-eastern Asia, caused to flow northward towards the Riu Kiu islands; here a small branch passes by the west coast of Kiushiu into the Sea of Japan, but the main volume flows along the southern and eastern shores of Japan, which it bathes, until meeting a reverse arctic current (the Oya Shiwo) off the north of Honshiu, it has its course turned towards America. As a carrier of warm water from the tropics towards the poles, the Kuro Shiwo has been reckoned three times as great as the Gulf Stream. Its average width is about 100 miles, its velocity three miles an hour, and its tempera ture from 3° to 4° Fahr. above that of the surrounding ocean. As its waters almost exclusively wash the eastern shores of the empire, its influence is felt not only in the climate of Japan as compared with that of the mainland, but in the climate of the B eastern side of Japan as compared with that of the western. While Japan is thus favoured beyond the countries of the Asiatic mainland which lie within the same parallels of latitude, its climate is more severe than that of European regions within the same parallels, as will appear from the following figures. Tôkiyô (Yedo) lies in lat. 35° 43′ N., and is therefore in much the same latitude as Gibraltar; but, while the average annual temperature of Gibraltar is 63.1° Fahr., that of Tôkiyô is only 577°. The greater severity of the Japanese climate will be still more apparent from a consideration of the extremes in Tôkiyô, where, while in summer the mercury may rise to 96°, in winter it sometimes falls as low as 16'2°. Nagasaki, in lat. 32° 44′ N., has a winter extreme of 23.2°; at Niigata, on the west coast, in lat. 37° 55′ N., the annual extremes are 95° and 15.8°, and at Hakodate, in lat. 41° 46′ N., 84° and 2°. There is no part of the empire in which snow does not fall. In Tôkiyô it seldom lies more than six inches deep, but on the opposite coast it often reaches a depth of three or four feet at the sea level, while among the upper valleys of Kaga eighteen to twenty feet are common. Niigata has on an average thirty-two days of snowfall every year, and the frost there is sometimes so severe that the ice on the Shinano-gawa is thick enough to Variety of Climate. allow a cart and horse to cross it. 19 Hakodate has still colder winters. Even at Tôkiyô there were, in the winter of 1880-81, thirty days on which it was possible to have skating, and two gentlemen passing one December morning along the eastern shore of Yedo bay, observed that the sea was frozen out from the shore for a distance of fifty yards. It should be mentioned, however, that in Japan, as in Europe and America, the winter of 1880-81 was unusually severe, and moreover, that the inner portions of Yedo bay are extremely shallow. Still, facts like these show how very far Japan is from having the tropical climate which many in our country seem to attribute to it. The winter's cold is very much mitigated during the day by the influence of the sun, which is both more powerful and less frequently obscured than in England. Thus, while the castle-moats in Tôkiyô are often in the morning covered with a coating of ice, by midday this has generally disappeared in all but the most sheltered places. Scarcely a winter passes, however, without frost of sufficient intensity and continuance to render skating possible on pieces of water either naturally or artificially screened from the sun's rays. The hottest season is from the middle of July to the middle or end of September. For several weeks before and after this period rain is plentiful, some times falling in torrents for five or six days in succession. At such times the climate cannot be called healthy outside, perpendicular lines of rain steadily pouring down; inside, a musty smell,-books, boots, clothes, etc., covered with green mould,—everything more or less damp,-oneself lying down or walking about in a bath of perspiration, and feeling enervated or worse. In the warm months, the vapours carried by the south-west monsoons coming into contact with colder masses of air, become condensed into clouds or mist, and the atmosphere, although probably not dense, is yet often hazy. In the cooler months, on the other hand, the northerly winds, coming over the mountain ranges of the interior, are dry and transparent. These remarks, however, apply to the east rather than to the west coast. Spring and autumn are delightful seasons, more especially the latter, when days of almost unbroken sunshine and invigorating air may continue for weeks and even months. During the last three months of my residence in Tôkiyô, from the middle of October to the middle of January, there were only five days on which rain fell. Day after day overarched the landscape with an Italian sky, into which rose, sixty miles off, the matchless cone of Fuji-san, sparkling in a mantle of virgin snow. Even the nights were so clear that, when the moon was at its full, the sacred mountain was visible by its light. And the |