In the evening the Biologists gave a dinner in honour of Professor _M----’s_ safe return from Java, and my advent. About forty or so were there (all men, of course), and it was a very jolly dinner indeed, commencing at 5.30, and as I was a foreigner and used to late hours (!), continuing till 9. Nearly every one had been abroad, and between them they knew almost all my European and American scientific friends--so I did not feel at all as though I was in a strange land. They all stood up to drink the health of the guests, so I had to make a little after-dinner speech,--a thing I hate, and am not able to do very well.
=November 23.=--This morning I got up while it was dark, and only arrived here after dark--here being a district where beautiful fossil Angiosperms are reported. There was a four-hours’ ride in a _kuruma_, along one of the straightest roads I ever saw, for the first half of the time. After that the mountains were lovely, clad with pine and maple, a few of which were still crimson, with the clear water rushing over the green rocks. Though they told me it would be frightfully cold up in the mountains so late, I am very comfortable in this inn, where the hot water for the baths runs perpetually from a boiling natural spring. The baths are delightful, and if cyanophyceae make them slippery, what matter?
=November 24.=--This morning early I started off on foot in glorious hot sunshine to get the fossils, and succeeded in getting more than my coolie could carry. I am almost the only visitor in the place, and every one is very kind and very interested. My colloquial Japanese comes a cropper now and then--but I get what I want, which is the main thing. The rocky valleys and woods are very lovely, and I appreciate the loneliness after these Tokio weeks. I should like always to live in complete solitude two days in seven.
The rocks in the neighbourhood are volcanic and are of a lovely green, so that the water rushing over them is particularly beautiful. The woody valleys are quite deserted, but are still warm in the sun, and gay with crimson leaves and berries, and some brilliant _purple_ berries of a colour I never saw in Nature before--it is just like one of my detested aniline dyes, but looks quite beautiful when painting the skin of a berry!