rods made of bamboo some twelve feet long, and lack of fish, clams, etc., is supplied by the abundance of pearl oysters and seaweed, which are both used on the island and exported. The pearl oysters are very large some measuring ten inches in diameter, and very fleshy. Unlike other oysters, it has only one shell, which is often used by the Koreans as an ash tray and from which mother of pearl is obtained. Covered with this shell as with a roof the oyster lives fastened to a rock. Its meat is considered a luxurious dish and one oyster costs as much as six cents on the island. Pearls are but very seldom found in the oysters. For export the oysters are torn out of the shell; the intestine bag cut off, the meat cleaned, dried and strung on thin sticks. Altho white when fresh the color changes to a dark red, like that of a dried apricot. They can be seen displayed in the native grocery shops in Seoul, flat reddish disks about four inches in diameter fastened by tens with a thin stick stuck thro them. Of the seaweeds there are several different kinds: some of them are used as fertilizers, some are used for food and some are sold to the Japanese for making carbonate of soda. The first kind is gathered on the seashore, but the other two have to be obtained from the bottom of the sea. It is strange to say that the diving for these weeds as well as for the pearl oysters is entirely done by women. Dressed in a kind of bathing suit with a sickle in one hand and a gourd with bag tied to it in front of them, they swim out from the shore as far as half a mile: boats cannot be afforded and they dive, probably a depth of forty or fifty feet, to the bottom, cut the weeds with the sickle, or if they find a pearl oyster, tear it off from the stone, and then put it into the bag which is kept floating by the gourd. They do not go back before the bag is filled, which often takes more than half an hour. Altho they are magnificent swimmers, one cannot help admiring their endurance, when he thinks that this work is begun in February. Of late Japanese supplied with diving apparatus, have been coming to Quelpart and catching all the pearl oysters, so that the poor women have to be satisfied with the weeds only. The magistrates told us that these Japanese never asked for permission nor paid anything for catching the pearl oysters. If it is so, the imposition upon the weak Koreans is surprising.