Strange as it may seem, the peasant, though living between the two great tea-producing countries of the world—Japan and China—and in the latitude of tea-plantations, scarcely knows the taste of tea, and the fragrant herb is as little used as is coffee in Japan. The most common drink, after what the clouds directly furnish, is the water in which rice has been boiled. Infusions of dried ginseng, orange-peel, or ginger serve for festal purposes, and honey when these fail; but the word “tea,” or cha, serves the Corean, as it does the typical Irishman, for a variety of infusions and decoctions. With elastic charity the word covers a multitude of sins, chiefly of omission; all that custom or euphony requires is to prefix the name of the substance used to “cha” and the drink is tea—of some kind. The staple diet has in it much more of meat and fat than that of the Japanese. The latter acknowledge that the average Corean can eat twice as much as himself. Beef, pork, fowls, venison, fish, and game are consumed without much waste in rejected material. Nearly everything edible about an animal is a tidbit, and a curious piece of cookery, symbolical of a generous feast, is often found at the board of a liberal host. This tang-talk (which often becomes the “town-talk”) is a chicken baked and served with its feathers, head, claws, and inwards intact. “To treat to an entire fowl” is said of a liberal host, and is equivalent to “killing the fatted calf.” Fish are often eaten raw from tail to head, especially if small, with only a little seasoning. Ho-hoi, or fish-bone salad, is a delicacy. Dog-flesh is on sale among the common butchers’ meats, and the Coreans enjoy it as our Indians do. In the first month of the year, however, owing to religious scruples, no dog-meat is eaten, or dishes of canine origin permitted.