BOTANICON SINICUM. 125 
A few years after Cleyer had left Japan, another German, an 
able explorer and botanist, arrived in that country and spent 
about two years there. Engelberth Kaempfer was born in 1651 
at Lemgo (Lippe-Detmold). In 1683 he accompanied a Swedish 
Embassy to Persia as Secretary, but on its return he separated 
from it and proceeded to the Persian Gulf, where a Dutch fleet 
was stationed at that time. In 1685 he entered the service of the 
Dutch East-India Company as a surgeon, and arrived at Batavia 
in 1689. In the following year a Dutch squadron was sent out 
to Siam and Japan, and Kaempfer was of the party. On the 22nd 
September 1690 he reached Nagasaki. He had two oppor- 
tunities of visiting Yeddo, performing the journey thither partly 
by the overland road, partly by sea. His first stay in Yeddo 
lasted from March 18 to April 5, 1691; the second from March 
31 to April 29, 1692. He left Japan in the same year, returned 
to Europe in 1694, and died in 1716 in his native country. For 
further bisgrasditcal details regarding Kaempfer see Rosny’s 
“Variétés orientales,” 1872, p. 98, where an interesting account 
of his life and his scientific works is found. » Kaempfer was not 
only a skillful botanist, but an acute observer in general. He has 
connected his name imperishably with the history of botanical 
discoveries in Japan, and the accounts he noted down with respect 
to the Japanese Empire and other countries he visited will always 
Stand as a model of accurate and judicious information and keen 
observation. In 1712 he brought out his Amenitates Exotica. 
The second fasciculus (p. 466) contains an account of the plants 
from which paper is manufactured in Japan; in the third fasciculus 
(p. 605) a treatise on the Tea-shrub is found. Besides this the 
Whole of the fifth fasciculus (p. 767—912) is devoted to the de- 
scription of more than 500 species of Japanese plants, 31 of which 
are represented by excellent drawings. The Japanese names 
of the plants are always given, and Chinese names in Chinese 
characters are generally added. Although these characters are 
often wrongly or indistinctly printed, there is no difficulty in 
deciphering them. Kaempfer’s botanical deserintions are a gneenly 
faithful, in some instances much detailed. : 
_ ‘The Amenitates Exotic “acum vais a small portion of ; 
