124 BOTANICON SINICUM. 
engaged a Chinese artist to paint for him from nature the economic 
and ornamental plants cultivated at Peking. These valuable 
drawings give also the botanical details of each plant. 
As has been stated in a previous chapter, the Japanese early 
adopted Chinese names for their medicinal, economic and other 
plants. But, although they have generally tried to apply a Chinese 
appellation of a plant to the same plant in Japan, it often happens 
that a plant in Japan bearing the same name as in China belongs 
toa different species; in some instances even quite dissimilar plants 
are designated by the same Chinese characters in the two countries. 
The first attempt of a European to study the Flora of Japan 
was made by Andr.Cleyer, a German, who visited Yeddo in 1683 
as envoy of the Dutch East-India Company, and resided in Naga- 
saki as chief supercargo of the Dutch factory till 1686. His 
letters on Japanese plants addressed to Dr. Mentzel have been 
published in the Academia nature curiosorum Ephemerides, 1686 
—1700. Cleyer’s descriptions as well as the drawings appended 
have little value. The Japanese names are sadly perverted. 
Sprengel in his “Geschichte der Botanik,” II. 68, gives the 
Scientific names of as many of Cleyer’s plants as it was possible 
to ascertain. The botanist Ch. H. Erndtel, in a letter dated 
Dresden 1716 and addressed to Jac. Breyn of Dantzig, refers to 
a collection of 1360 Japanese drawings of plants on paper of the 
Paper mulberry, which Mentzel had received from Cleyer and 
which he had subsequently presented to the Royal Library at Berlin. 
In 1878, when I visited Berlin, I saw these drawings and was 
much disappointed, for they were miserably and inaccurately 
executed, and have no scientific value. The paper used is of an 
inferior kind and not that manufactured from the bark of Brousso- 
netia papyrifera, as Erndtel asserts, 
But there is in the same Library another volume entitled 
- Cleyer’s Flora japonica, containing only 101 coloured drawings of — 
Japanese plants, apparently painted from nature in J apan by 
Cleyer’s order. These have more claim to botanical correctness. — 
Cleyer has himself added some memoranda. The names are given 
in Japanese letters only. This volume was referred to Dr. Siebold, 
who in 1856 drew up an Index of the drawings and added the 
scientific botanical names. . igs, ce 
