The most prized articles among the tribute offerings (in these days, rather a “bonus” or bribe, than a tax or humiliation) presented at the court of Peking, as of old at Kiōto or Yedo, are these gorgeous pelts. One of them, which the writer saw recently, the property of a Japanese merchant, measured twelve feet long, exclusive of the tail. The symbol of military rank in old Japan, as indicative as our shoulder-straps, was a tiger-skin scabbard. Especially was it honorable to wear it if captured with one’s own hands on “frontier service.” The hair of these animals seems to have more of a woolly quality than those from India, while the orange tint is far less predominant, white taking its place. The black bars are, however, of equal magnificence with the tropical product, and the tail seems to be rather longer. Some idea of the great numbers and awful ravages of these huge felidæ in the two northern provinces of the Peninsular Kingdom, may be gained from the common saying of the Chinese that “the Coreans hunt the tiger during one half the year and the tigers hunt the Coreans during the other half.” The Coreans retort by the proverb born of the desolation that has so often followed the presence of a Chinese army on their soil, whether as invaders or allies: “After the Chinese, the tigers.” As a single man can create the gigantic spectre of the Brocken, so in the national literature this one animal seems to have cast a measureless shadow of evil influence upon this hermit nation. From the most ancient times it has been an object of religious reverence. “They also worshipped the tiger, which they looked on as a god,” was written of the people living on the sea of Japan before the Christian era. “They had also the many-spotted leopard.” A few of the national proverbs will illustrate the amount of attention which the subject receives in daily life, in art, religion, and language, and how often it serves to point the morals and adorn the tales told around Corean hearths. “A wooden tiger,” is the ass in the lion’s skin. “A broken-backed tiger” describes impotent and raging malice. “To give wings to a tiger,” is to add shrewdness to force. “If you don’t enter the tiger’s lair, you can’t get her cubs,” is said to spur on the faint heart, “to beard the tiger in his cave.” “A tiger’s repast,” describes excess in eating, or the gorging which follows after fasting. “To nourish a tiger, and have him devour you,” probably states a common fact of history, as well as it depicts ingratitude. “If you tread on the tail of a tiger, you’ll know it,” explains itself. “It is hard to let go the tail of a tiger,” suggests our “fire” after the “frying-pan,” or the “other horn of the dilemma;” while over-cautious people “in avoiding a deer, meet a tiger.” Men of irascible temper or violent disposition are given the pet name of maing-ho, which means an unusually ferocious tiger or “man-eater.”