690 THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. [chap, xviii. 



house life in Europe. All went on in the distillery and the 

 public-house as calmly and quietly as the work in the house of 

 a well-to-do country squire in Sweden who does not swear and 

 is not quarrelsome. 



Sold is a liquor made by fermenting and distilling rice. It 

 is very variable in taste and strength, sometimes resembling 

 inferior Rhine wine, sometimes more like weak grain brandy. 

 Along with saki our host also manufactured vinegar, which was 

 made from rice and saki residues, which with the addition of 

 some other vegetable substances were allowed to stand and 

 acidify in large jars ranged in rows in the yard. 



When my arrival became known I was visited by the prin- 

 cipal men of the village. We were soon good friends by the 

 help of a friendly reception, cigars and red wine. Among 

 them the physician of the village was especially of great use to 

 me. As soon as he became aware of the occasion of my visit he 

 stated that such fossils as I was in search of did indeed occur in 

 the region, but that they were only accessible at low water. I 

 immediately visited the place with the physician and my com- 

 panions from Nagasaki, and soon discovered several strata 

 containing the finest fossil plants one could desire. During 

 this and the following day I made a rich collection, partly with 

 the assistance of a numerous crowd of children who zealously 

 helped me in collecting. They were partly boys and partly girls, 

 the latter always having a little one on their backs. These little 

 children were generally quite bare-headed. Notwithstanding 

 this they slept with the crown of the head exposed to the hot- 

 test sun-bath on the backs of their bustling sisters, who jumped 

 lightly and securely over stocks and stones, and never appeared 

 to have any idea that the burdens on their backs were at all 

 unpleasant or troublesome. 



According to Dr. A. G. Nathorst's examination, the fossil 

 plants which I brought home from this place belong to the 

 more recent Tertiary formation. Our distinguished and acute 

 vegetable palaeontologist fixes attention on the point, that we 

 would have expected to find here a fossil flora allied to the 

 recent South Japanese, which is considered to be derived from 

 a Tertiary flora which closely resembles it. There is, however, 

 no such correspondence, for impressions of ferns are almost com- 

 pletely wanting at Mogi, and even of pines there is only a single 

 leaf-bearing variety which closely resembles the Spitzbergen 

 form of Sequoia Langsdorjii, Brag. On the other hand, there 

 are met with, in great abundance, the leaves of a species of 

 beech nearly allied to the red beech of America, Fagus 

 ferruginea, Ait., but not resembling the recent Japanese 

 varieties of the same family. There were found, besides, leaves of 

 Quercus, Juglans, Populus, Myrica, Salix, Zelkova, Liquidambar, 



