most glorious gift to man, and the grouping of colours (unless we set above it the grouping of sounds in music) to be the most divine of human arts. Neither does sober enquiry into botanical fact produce any warrant for the hard-and-fast set of linear rules elaborated by a coterie of dilettanti in the fifteenth century, who had never looked at nature but when "to advantage dressed." Still, Japanese floral design offers a subject as attractive as it is original. If not, as its more zealous and intolerant sectaries claim, the way of treating flowers, at least it is a way, a totally new way; and we are greatly mistaken if it and Japanese gardening do not soon make many European converts. The very flower-pots are delightful, with their velvety blue and white designs.
Books recommended. The Floral Art of Japan, by Josiah Conder. See also a preliminary article by the same author in Vol. XVII. Part II. of the "Asiatic Transactions."—The Garden of Japan, by F. T. Piggott.
Food. Like most other nations, the Japanese take three meals a day,—one on rising in the morning, one at noon, and one at about sunset. Much the same sort of food is partaken of at all these meals, but breakfast is lighter than the other two. The staple is rice which is replaced by barley, millet, or some other cheap grain in the poorer country districts,—rice with fish and eggs, and minute portions of vegetables either fresh or pickled. Beans are in particular requisition.
Buddhism has left its impress here, as on everything in Japan. To Buddhism was due the abandonment of a meat diet, now over a thousand years ago. The permission to eat fish, though that too entailed the taking of life, which is contrary to strict Buddhist tenets, seems to have been a concession to human frailty. Pious frauds, moreover, came to the rescue. One may even now see the term "mountain whale" (yama-kujira) written up over certain eating-houses, which means that venison is there for sale. The logical process is this:—A whale is a fish. Fish may be eaten. Therefore, if you call venison "mountain whale," you may eat venison. Of course no actual prohibition against
