as vastly superior to the ordinary British sailor's tattooing as Heidsieck Monopole is to small beer. Birds, flowers, landscapes of marvellous finish and beauty thoroughly Japanese withal in style and conception are now executed, some specimens being so minute as almost to render the aid of a microscope necessary in order properly to appreciate them.
The principal materials used are sepia and vermilion, the former for the outline and ground, the latter for touching up and picking out special details, for instance, a cock's crest. A brown colour is occasionally produced by resorting to Indian red. Prussian blue, also yellow and green, may likewise be employed, but are considered dangeous. The needles are all of steel, the finest being used to prick in the outlines, the thicker ones for shading. There are six sizes in all. The most delicate work takes only three needles; but ordinary outlines require a row of from four to nine needles. Shading is done by means of superposed rows of needles tied together, as, for instance, five, four, and three, making twelve in all, and so on up to as many as sixty. In such cases the thickest needles are employed. The needles are always spliced to a bone handle by means of a silken thread; and this handle is held in the right hand leaning on the left, somewhat as a billiard cue is held. Though an appreciable fraction of the total length of the needles protrudes beyond the splicing, blood is rarely drawn, owing to the skill with which the instrument is manipulated.
The most recent refinement of the art is the use of cocaine, either as a wash or mixed with the sepia. But the pain, on an ordinarily fleshy arm, is not acute enough for most persons to care to avail themselves of it. Smooth arms are the best to operate on, hairiness being apt to make the colour run.
Tea is believed to have been introduced into Japan from China in A. D. 805 by the celebrated Buddhist saint, Dengyō Daishi. It had long been a favourite beverage of the Buddhists of the continent, whom it served to keep wakeful
