108 PROCEEDINGS COTTESWOLD CLUB 1905 
leaves the country without being reported to the Customs. 
For many years the Japanese Mint at Osaka has drawn 
largely on this source. 
Besides gold, there are also galena, copper, coal and 
plumbago. Very little so far is known regarding the 
extent and value of these ores. Coal was hardly used in 
the country until Korea was opened to foreign trade. The 
occasion for its use which then arose led to its discovery 
in three or four parts of North Korea, where it has since 
been worked on a small scale. The large demand for 
copper for the manufacture of the utensils in brass which 
are in general use in the country, has not led to any large 
workings, and veins of copper remain in many places un- 
worked, probably on account of the difficulty encountered 
in working them by native methods. In the silver mines 
the same difficulty is encountered, the hardness of the 
rock occasionally baffling all their efforts, and it seems 
doubtful whether the yield is sufficient to justify the large 
expenditure of capital on machinery. 
For salt the country is entirely dependent on the pans 
on the coast, where the salt is obtained by evaporation, 
apparently by the same methods as are employed on 
the China coast, north of Shanghai. 
The Korean language has the peculiarities of the 
Altaic or Turanian group. It has no gender of nouns, 
only one declension, and that formed by invariable Zost- 
positions. Adjectives are rare, and never declined; a 
demonstrative adjective takes the place of the third 
pronoun, and the relative pronoun is replaced by the use 
of participles. The conjugation of verbs is formed solely 
by agglutination, and post-positions do not form a part of 
compound verbs. The construction of the language is 
said by Professor Parker to be exactly like Japanese. 
Honorific forms of the conjugation of verbs abound, to 
indicate the relative rank of the speaker, the person 
