210 AN ENGLISH STRAWBERRY. Chap. XIIL 
o’clock in the morning by an earthquake of a very 
violent character. Some rings suspended from a 
canopy in the temple first indicated the motion and 
began to tingle, then the whole building creaked 
and groaned, and lastly the bed on which I lay 
moved under me. It occurred at about three o’clock 
in the morning, and lasted for a few seconds only. 
Several other shocks were experienced afterwards 
during the morning, but these were much less 
violent, and some of them scarcely perceptible. 
June 2nd . — The natives are still busy all over 
the fields, sowing and planting the summer crops 
between the rows of the ripening com. Blazing 
fires and dense clouds of smoke are now seen all 
over the country. The rape -harvest is finished, 
the seed has been trampled out, and the farmers 
are now engaged in burning the stalks for the sake 
of the ashes, which are used as manure for the 
summer crops. 
A nursery gardener who brought me a collection 
of plants to-day for sale, had amongst them a 
genuine English strawberry covered with ripe 
fruit. I have already had occasion' to notice, in an 
earlier chapter, several foreign plants which had 
been introduced from Western countries to Japan, 
as a proof of the enterprise of the people, but I was 
not aware until now that the real English straw- 
berry was also here. A species of Fragaria is com- 
mon, in a wild state, on the banks and hill-sides, 
both in Japan and in China ; but it has nothing to 
do with the species we cultivate in Europe, and is 
