contains nothing of a positive character until the year 200 A.D., when an Amazonian Empress, who rejoiced in the rather startling name of Jingo, headed a successful campaign against the Koreans. Contemporary historical research has resulted in clearing away a good deal of the mist which shrouded in a veil of mystery the primitive history of Japan. It would seem, however, for instance, that some centuries before our era the Mongolian pirates indulged in frequent incursions upon the western coast of the country in much the same unpleasant manner as did, some thousand years later, the Normans in Europe. After exterminating the natives, who were not numerous, they established themselves, together with their wives and families, in the island of Kiu-Siu. Later on, an illustrious chief, who turns out on closer acquaintance to be none other than Jimmu-Tenno, of legendary fame, crossed over to the great island and ‘found it peopled by inhabitants of the same race as himself’; hence it becomes evident that there were two distinct migrations from the mainland of the ancestors of the actual Japanese, a fact confirmed in a double cycle of heroic legends, one of which deals with the island of Kiu-Siu and the other with the province of Idzuma, situated on the west coast of Hondo, an island opposite Korea. The Japanese, therefore, form a part of the great family scientifically known as the Uralo-Altaic, which includes the Finns, the Hungarians, the Turks, the Mongols and the Koreans. The different branches of this family appear to be less closely united than are those of the white race, but on the other hand, their languages, which are distinctly agglutinant, have certainly a common origin. It should be remarked that the Chinese do not form part of this group, constituting a family quite apart, whose language is distinctly monosyllabic and rhythmic. Their handwriting, however, was adopted by the Japanese between a thousand and twelve hundred years ago, as were also a number of words describing objects which up to that time were unknown to them, and probably introduced from China. If it is an undoubted fact that the Chinese and Japanese belong to the Yellow Race, the link which unites them is quite as remote as that which exists between a Frenchman and a German on the one hand, or an Arab and a Kabyle on the other. A superficial analogy between the Chinese and the Japanese must not mislead us. The very sparse indigenous race which the Korean immigrants found upon the south and south-west of Japan were of the same family as the Ainos of our time, of whom some 15,000 still linger in Yezo, the great southern island of the Archipelago; and, moreover, they belonged to the same race as the Ghilaks of the Amur, and the tribes to the north-east of Siberia. These Ainos, who exist by hunting and fishing, are considered to be the hairiest people on earth; they are mere savages, quite as dirty in their habits as the Japanese are clean.