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same way. In some of the better class of houses, however, the walls and ceilings are lathed and plastered but this is by no means general. Outside the walls there are sometimes fixed laths to which square tiles are nailed—the joints of the tiles being pointed with plaster—sometimes the walls are plastered without any tiles and in those houses which are intended to be of the best description thin stone flags, of a thickness of about four to eight inches, are built on one another and kept in their places by small iron dogs attached to the woodwork. In some of the houses iron stove pipes are let through the walls surrounded by a stone, but the more pretentions have fireplaces and chimnies erected with stone in their interiors. These are generally about five or six feet square at the base, are generally badly built, and as they project through the roofs they must be in some cases thirty or forty feet high. They can only be kept upright by the floor or roof beams which project against them, and are a constant source of dread and danger.
This is the new species of building common in Japan and foreigners are doubtless responsible for it: even at the present day very few houses in the foreign settlements are built after a more secure or substantial style, and in Japanese hands it has, if anything, become worse. When foreigners first arrived in this country they may have had reasons for adopting this method of construction. 1st.—It is, somewhat similar to the Japanese method and those who commenced building might have been glad to adopt it on that account as the work would there be more or less familiar to the only workmen who were available at the time. 2nd.—It has the advantage of only requiring the very cheapest and most easily procured materials, and so is well suited for temporary purposes or for hasty erection. 3rd.—It is supposed by some persons to be the best construction to resist earthquakes on account of its elasticity and on account of the wooden frame work preventing the outside lining of stones or other covering from being precipitated inwards on the occasion of a shock. The first reason in its favour does
