THE 



POPULAR SCIENCE 



MONTHLY. 



JULY, 1904. 



A VISIT TO THE JAPANESE ZOOLOGICAL STATION 



AT MISAKI. 



By Professor BASHFORD DEAN", 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY. 



JAPAN is not at its best in the rainy season. Eor the rain comes 

 down in floods. And my first impression was that Misaki was 

 a larger aquarium than even a zealous naturalist needed. We had left 

 Tokyo at six — I was about to say, early one morning, but I recall that 

 six is not early in Japan — on a small bay steamer which plies daily to 

 Misaki. And a few hours later we had about reached a climax in our 

 rolling, when, turning suddenly, we ran under the lee of an island and 

 came to anchor. I confess that I was not cheered by the glimpse of 

 Misaki ; the town was a flat, sodden mass of thatched houses, its back- 

 ground an abrupt knoll, with a ragged skyline of dripping and irreg- 

 ular pines, and the drooping eaves of a temple. And to add to the 

 dismalness of the picture, even the sampan men appeared tearful as 

 they shedded streams of rain from the points of their porcupine-like 

 coats. Our fellow passengers, on the other hand, showed not a symp- 

 tom of discomfort, and they clambered smilingly into the sampans, 

 standing or crouching under a mass of oil-paper umbrellas, men often 

 tucking up their kimonos and standing bare-legged like storm-bound 

 birds — their wide wooden clogs giving them the appropriate webbed 

 feet. Ashore was waiting for us an assistant of the station, Mr. 

 Tsuchida, and together we waded through the narrow and fishy streets 

 of the town (which I found, to my surprise, had a population of five 

 thousand, and was of no little commercial importance in furnishing 

 fish for the Tokyo market) to the Inn Kinokuniya. This inn I recall 

 vividly, for its host, in spite of the drenching rain, thought it neces- 

 sary to hunt the town for a knife and fork for the foreigner, and while 



