i894. NATURAL SCIENCE IN J^iPAN. 23 



to them in a very small degree. Kaempfer regrets that the shells 

 and other marine invertebrates, such beautiful material for a zoo- 

 logist, are wasted on the sea-god, whom he calls Jebus. Pearls, 

 indeed, they prized, having gained from the Chinese a knowledge of 

 their value ; but they knew so little of their nature as to imagine 

 that some of them could grow of themselves and breed fresh pearls. 

 Earthquakes, frequent though they were, they still ascribed to some 

 large whale burrowing under the islands. We cannot, however, 

 venture to laugh at the Japanese, for the works of Gesner and 

 Aldrovandus, published not half a century before, contained monsters 

 quite as terrible and myths no less absurd. 



Over a century elapsed before another man of any scientific 

 importance found his way to Japan. At last, in August, 1775, 

 C. P. Thunberg, the Swedish entomologist, came as physician to the 

 Dutch legation, and he stayed in Nagasaki till December, 1776. He 

 was not idle during his visit, and the results are to be found in his 

 Flora Japonica, published at Leipzig in 1784, in Icones plantanim 

 japonicavum, five folios published at Upsala, 1794-1805, and in two 

 volumes issued at Paris in 1796 and entitled Voyages de C. P. Thunberg 

 an Japon. The natural history portion of the last work is com- 

 prised in chapters xviii., xix., xx., and xxiii., of volume ii. Besides 

 making researches on his own account, Thunberg instructed some 

 Japanese in various branches of natural history, especially botany. 



Again we pass over three-quarters of a century before the arrival 

 of the greatest German of all who have visited Japan. Philipp Franz 

 von Siebold was born at Wiirzburg in 1796. In 1822 he entered 

 the service of the King of the Netherlands as physician to the East 

 Indian army, and on his arrival at Batavia was appointed leader of 

 a Dutch scientific mission then starting for Japan, in which position 

 he landed at Nagasaki in August, 1823. Here, as Professor 

 Chamberlain writes in his useful book Things Japanese, — " By force 

 of character, by urbanity of manner, by skill as a physician, 

 even by a system of bribery which fell in with the customs of the 

 country, and which surely, under the circumstance, no sensible 

 man of the world will condemn, he obtained an extraordinary hold 

 over the Japanese, suspicious and intractable as they then were. 

 Having, in 1826, accompanied the Dutch embassy to Yedo, Siebold 

 obtained permission to remain behind — the sole European in that 

 great Asiatic capital, then absolutely sealed against the outer world. 

 The excuse pleaded and accepted was that he would instruct the 

 Japanese physicians in the more recondite branches of their art. 

 His leisure he utilised in multifarious scientific researches ; and so 

 well did he know how to ingratiate himself that some of the highest 

 in the land willingly added to his store of knowledge. Suddenly a 

 rumour got about that the chief Court spy had sold him a map of the 

 country. This was treason according to the old Japanese law. The 

 spy was ordered to commit havakiri [disembowelment] , and Siebold 



