of the Asiatic Society of Japan free, from the date of their election, and have the privilege of purchasing back numbers at half-price. These are the Asiatic Transactions, so often referred to in the course of the present work. Scarcely a subject connected with Japan but may be found learnedly discussed in the pages of the Asiatic Transactions. A General Index is in preparation; hitherto only that appended to Vol. XXIII. has been available.
Besides the Asiatic Society, there is in Tōkyō a German Society, entitled Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens, the scope of whose labours is closely similar, and whose valuable Mittheilungen, or German Asiatic Transactions, as we have ventured to call them when quoting them, are strongly recommended to readers familiar with the German language. This Society was founded in 1873. The Japan Society, founded in London in 1892, has published many good papers, especially on subjects connected with art.
Bamboos. So extensive is the part played by the bamboo in Japanese domestic economy that the question is rather, what does it not do? The larger species serve as poles for carrying heavy weights, drying clothes, punting boats, etc.; as flag-staffs, as water-pipes, recommended hereto by their valuable property of neither rusting like iron, nor yet rotting as wood is apt to do if the water be from a hot mineral spring. As carrying poles and when employed for the framework of houses, their combination of lightness with strength makes them peculiarly valuable, it being well-known to mechanicians that the hollow tube is of all forms that which best unites those two qualities. A small species of bamboo serves to make tobacco pipe-stems; one of intermediate size makes ornamental doors and palings, in which the varying height of the joints gives a natural pattern. Others, cut into thin strips, which are sometimes bound with silk, form window-blinds; and the tender sprouts of more than one species are even boiled and eaten as a vegetable. Penholders, broom-handles, walking-sticks, umbrella-handles and also the ribs of umbrellas, angling-rods,
