Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IX.djvu/552

places, and used in the "Yankee lamps" now everywhere prevalent. Alum and green and blue vitriol are made by the natives. Granite, porphyry, obsidian, syenite, gneiss, freestone, and a great variety of the softer building stones are obtained in almost every province. Agates, carnelians, and jasper of great size and beauty are found. Small garnets are plentiful. Pearls are fished up along the coast, and the pearl fisheries may yet become a very important branch of industry. The rock crystals of Japan have long been celebrated for their great size and clearness. One at the Vienna exposition was a sphere, perfectly clear, and seven inches in diameter. The Japanese cut them into balls, and the native lapidaries are very skilful in their craft. Salt is produced by repeatedly saturating sand with salt water, drying it, and dissolving out the salt. Malachite and cinnabar are well known. Petrifactions and fossils are often seen. Sulphurous, chalybeate, and mineral springs, the waters of which are variously impregnated, are very numerous throughout the empire.—There is perhaps no other country in the world of the same area that produces such a variety of conifers. They are everywhere abundant, the main roads are lined with them, and clipped hedges of cryptomeria, retinospora, biota, &c., are very general. Around the temples, where they are never cut down, they attain the greatest size and grandeur. They are often trained to spread out over bamboo frames, and particular limbs are propped up and grow to a great length. Timber is very plentiful, cheap, and of great variety. The mulberry tree grows wild, but the young trees that are reared for the food of the silkworm are not allowed to grow more than 6 ft. high. The varnish tree (rhus vernicifera), from which the famed lacquer is made, also produces oil and vegetable tallow, like its near ally the rhua succedanea. Large quantities of camphor are exported, being obtained from the camphor trees which attain great age and size in Japan. The chief fruit trees are the apple, pear, plum, apricot, peach, chestnut, walnut, persimmon, pomegranate, fig, orange, lemon, and citron. The grape is the best fruit in Japan. Strawberries grow wild, but are nearly tasteless. Loquats and kumquats, as in China, are common. The persimmons are often as large as apples, and very sweet. The cherry tree blossoms, but bears no eatable fruit. The bamboo is found almost everywhere from Karafto to Riu Kiu, and is put to an astonishing number of uses. The box tree, juniper, ivy, palm, elm, and a black wood like ebony are also found. The camellia grows wild, often 40 ft. high, and is cultivated everywhere for the beauty of its blossoms, an immense number of varieties being produced. Beans, peas, white and sweet potatoes, carrots, lettuce, beets, yams, tomatoes, ginger, egg plant, gourds, cucumbers, mushroom, lilies (the bulbs of which are eaten), bamboo (the young sprouts are eaten), spinach, leeks, radishes, garlic, capsicum, endive, fennel, pumpkins, squashes, beets, turnips, and asparagus are the principal vegetables for the table. Many of these were introduced by the Dutch, and some by Com. Perry. The daikon, an enormous radish, often 30 in. long and 4 thick, is a staple article of food in both the fresh and pickled state. The food of the people is mainly vegetables and fish. Rice, millet, and buckwheat are eaten in great quantities; maize and barley are also raised. Rape for oil, hemp for cordage and cloth, cotton for clothing, indigo, and tobacco which is very mild, are cultivated. Many specimens of the American flora are now common in Japan.—The poverty of the Japanese fauna is well known, but, like the flora, it corresponds more closely to that of the American than to that of the Asiatic continent. In the woods and wilds are bears, wild boars, wolves, deer, badgers, foxes, ground squirrels, and hares. The monkeys are so numerous as to be troublesome at times. Weasels, martens, and moles are very common. Wild ducks and geese, pigeons, woodcocks, snipes, pheasants, teal, herons, and storks are among the birds used for food. The hawk, buzzard, crow, eagle, cormorant, gull, sparrow, red-billed magpie, and ortolan are numerous. The canary is now well domesticated in Japan, and the unguisu or Japanese nightingale is noted for its music. Tame animals are now more numerous than formerly, owing to the increasing habit of eating meat. Venison, wild boar, and monkey meat have been eaten from ancient times; and beef, pork, and mutton, especially the first, are now eaten in all the large cities. Goats are found around Nagasaki, cows and bulls in every province, hogs in many places, and sheep in a few. The native horses are small and active. In Satsuma they are woolly, and in Tosa as small as Shetland ponies. Dogs are very numerous, but of gentle dispositions; and the highly prized variety of spaniel called chin, having a snub nose and silky fur, is supposed to be the original of the English variety called Prince Charles's spaniel. The cats are generally short-tailed; on the W. coast long-tailed cats are found, but most Japanese cats have tails from 1 to 3 in. long. Rabbits and guinea pigs are common pets. Among the domestic fowls, the turkey, peacock, goose, and swan are less common; but the bantam fowls, ordinary chickens, ducks, and pigeons are reared extensively for food. Fish is the staple animal food, and the great variety displayed in the markets, from river, lake, and sea, astonishes foreigners. The Japanese are especially fond of raw fish. A large proportion of the population are fishers. Many of the women are expert divers, often remaining for hours in the water; they can swim with bags full of heavy shell fish on their shoulders. Fishing is carried on with nets, hooks and lines, spears, bows and arrows, and with cormorants. Whales are pursued and killed whenever met with. Enormous squids with arms 25 ft. long, and crabs