into boiling water over the camp-fire furnishes a meal that gives ideal nourishment—that is, the sustenance that brings endurance without reaction.
A traveller approaching the Japanese coast will see so many junks that he cannot be blamed for concluding that every family in the Empire must own at least one of these odd, serviceable craft. There is not a point along the inhabited coast where a fleet of junks is not to be seen. One globe-trotting wag of a naturalist has declared that in the Japanese waters there are forty thousand varieties of fish, all but three kinds of which are edible. He added that there are something more than forty thousand ways of preparing these fish. There are nowhere in the world such prolific fishing-grounds as are to be found around the shores of Japan. The fish are caught in such numbers, and with so little difficulty, that naturally they form an important item in the Japanese diet and apparently with the best of results.
Very often the fish is served raw, either in a natural state or in very mild pickle. When
