CHAP. XVIIl.] 
THE CHINESE IN JAPAN, 
363 
a collection of land Crustacea on Renee, an island north of the 
limit of trees in the outer archipelago of northern Norway. It is 
possible to collect there in a few hours as many animals of this 
group as in fertile Japan in as many days. There are parts of Japan, 
covered with thick woods and thickets of bushes, where during 
a forenoon’s excursion one can scarcely find a single crustacean, 
although the ground is full of deep, shady clefts in which 
masses of dried leaves are collected, and which therefore ought 
to be an exceedingly suitable haunt for land mollusca. The 
reason of this poverty ought perhaps to be sought in the want 
of chalk or basic calcareous rocks, which prevails in the parts of 
Japan which we visited. 
After the Swedish-Dutch minister had further given us a 
splendid farewell dinner at the Grand Hotel, to which, as before, 
the Japanese ministers and the representatives of the foreign 
powers in Japan were invited, we at last weighed anchor on the 
11th October to prosecute our voyage. At this dinner we saw 
for the first time the Chinese embassy which at the time visited 
Japan with the view of settling the troublesome Loo-Choo affair 
which threatened to lead to a war between the two great powers 
of Eastern Asia. The Chinese ambassadors were, as usual, two 
in number, being commissioned to watch one over the other. 
One of them laughed immoderately at all that was said during 
dinner, although he did not understand a word. According 
to what I was told by one who had much experience in the 
customs of the heavenly empire, he did this, not because he 
heard or understood anything worth laughing at, but because 
he considered it good manners to laugh. 
Remarkable was the interest which the Chinese labourers 
settled at Yokohama took in our voyage, about which they 
appeared to have read something iii their own or in the 
Japanese newspapers. When I sent one of the sailors ashore 
to execute a commission, and asked him how he could do that 
without any knowledge of the language, he replied, “ There is no 
