The relations, both business and social, between the Japanese and the Koreans in Chemulpo are now much improved. Indeed, there is at present an almost complete absence of race-hatred between the two. Formerly, on some trifling occasion of a quarrel started between a Japanese and a Korean, an angry mob of several hundred on each side would quickly gather; and unless the other foreigners interfered in time, there was sure to be serious fighting and even bloodshed. But the growing number of those belonging to both nations who understand each other’s language and each other’s customs has almost entirely done away with the tendency to similar riots. Indeed, a positive feeling of friendliness is springing up between certain individuals and families of the two nationalities. All of which tends to confirm the statement of another business man—this time of Seoul, where the hatred of the Koreans for the Japanese is studiously kept aglow by Korean officialdom and by selfishly interested foreigners—that in fifty years, or less, no difference would be known between the two. There will then, perhaps, be Koreans boasting of their Japanese descent and Japanese boasting of their Korean descent; and a multitude of the people who will not even raise the question for themselves as to which kind of blood is thickest in their veins. Everywhere on the face of the earth ethnology is teaching the lesson that “purity” of blood is as much a fiction as is the so-called “primitive man.” According to Mr. Townsend, one cause of the deforestation of so large regions of Korea in former times was the fear of tigers; this fear was, of course, greatly increased by the fact that the Government did not dare to entrust the people with firearms. The tiger-hunters were, it will be remembered, a species of officials who composed the bravest, and oftentimes the only brave, troops in the king’s army. As late as about sixty years ago the principal road to Pyeng-yang from Seoul passed through a stretch of dense forest infested with tigers. As long as the slaughter by these beasts did not average more than one man a week, the people thought it could be borne; but when the number killed in this way rose to one or two a day, they applied to the Tai Won Kun, and permission was given to cut down the forest.