Island; the house-fly is a much less common plague than in Europe, except in the silk districts, and the bed-bug is entirely absent. On the other hand, the mosquito is a nightly plague during half the year in all places lying at an altitude of less than 1,500 feet above the sea, and in many even exceeding that height; the buyu—diminutive kind of gnat—infests many mountainous districts during the summer months, and the flea is unpleasantly common in summer.
The chief Crustacea are fresh-water and salt-water crabs, together with crayfishes, which here replace the lobsters of Europe and are often erroneously termed lobsters by the foreign residents. One species of crab (the Macrocheirus Kæmpferi Sbd.) is so gigantic that human beings have been killed and devoured by it. Its legs are over a yard and a half in length. There is another species—a tiny, but ill-favoured one—which is the object of a singular superstition. The common folk call it Heike-gani, that is, the Heike crab. They believe these creatures to be the wraiths of the Heike or Taira partisans, whose fleet was annihilated at the battle of Dan-no-ura in A.D. 1185.
Of molluscs, nearly 1,200 species have been described by Dunker, the best authority on the subject; and his enumeration is stated by Dr. Rein to be far from exhaustive. Of sea-urchins 26 species are known, and of starfishes 12 species. The coral tribe is well represented, though not by the reef-forming species of warmer latitudes. There are also various kinds of sponges. Indeed, one of the most curious and beautiful of all the many curious and beautiful things in Japan is the Glass Rope Sponge (Hyalonema Sieboldi), whose silken coils adorn the shell-shops at Enoshima.
The rapid extinction of many living creatures in Japan is scarcely less matter for regret than the cutting down of the forests to furnish railway sleepers and materials for the manufacture of paper. The deer have been practically exterminated since the present writer came to live in the country, and so have the herons. As for the cranes, they seem to have been
