which the flat plain is a great wild flower-bed, is at that lovely but missionary-ridden spot, Karuizawa. It has about the coolest climate in Japan, and reminded me, with its Maples, Ash trees, young Birches, and luzuriant grassy fields, of New England and Canada, while English friends kept exclaiming at its resemblance to the Highlands of Scotland. But my simile was the more accurate, as the botanists. Rein, Asa Gray, Sir Joseph Hooker, etc., have all been struck with the similarity of the vegetation of Japan in general to that of the Atlantic slope of North America, and of the flora of these hara regions in particular to that of the United States. I was indeed delighted, when I had painted dozens of flowers brought me by an enthusiastic friend, and had exclaimed on their likeness to those of my old home, and had remarked how odd it was that others, which I had never seen elsewhere, except in the ‘Sink Holes’ near St. Louis, had been verified by eminent authorities as being the very same things. Such a wealth of rich-hued Compositæ (fifty varieties, at least), of golden and purple Vetches, of Convolvuli, wild Larkspurs, Primulas, Spireas, ground Orchids, and deep-stained Brambles, as flourished there! It was a dazzling herbaceous border a mile wide at least; a gigantic ‘mixed bed’ whose seed had been sown broadcast. But the best of all was the real grass. No person who has not been exiled to the tropics for many years,
