JAPANESE HOUSE-BUILDING. 643 



It may be rash to say that meteorological science can gain nothing 

 from scientific observation of animal life ; but the character of the 

 weather-lore that has been handed down from father to son for the 

 past two centuries plainly indicates that the observations which gave 

 rise to them were anything but scientific in character. Mankind now, 

 as formerly, may be close observers of Nature, but this does not imply 

 that they are accurate observers. They assume as correct the ap- 

 pearance, but it is no unusual circumstance for an animal to be doing 

 the very opposite of what might naturally be supposed was the case. 

 The simple and sad fact derived from a study of local animal weather- 

 lore is that, in the days of our grandfathers, painstaking naturalists 

 were few and far between. 



JAPANESE HOUSE-BUILDING.* 



By Professor EDWAED S. MOESE. 



THE first sight of a Japanese house — that is, a house of the people — 

 is certainly disappointing. From the infinite variety and charm- 

 ing character of their various works of art, as we had seen them at 

 home, we were anticipating new delights and surprises in the charac- 

 ter of the house ; nor were we on more intimate acquaintance to be 

 disappointed. As an American, familiar with houses of certain types, 

 with conditions among them signifying poverty and shiftlessness, and 

 other conditions signifying refinement and wealth, we were not compe- 

 tent to judge the relative merits of a Japanese house. 



The first sight, then, of a Japanese house is disappointing ; it is 

 unsubstantial in appearance, and there is a meagerness of color. Being 

 unpainted, it suggests poverty ; and this absence of paint, with the 

 gray and often rain-stained color of the boards, leads one to compare 

 it with similar unpainted buildings at home — and these are usually 

 barns and sheds in the country, and the houses of the poorer people 

 in the city. With one's eye accustomed to the bright contrasts of 

 American houses, with their white, or light, painted surfaces ; rec- 

 tangular windows, black from the shadows within, with glints of light 

 reflected from the glass ; front door with its pretentious steps and 

 portico ; warm red chimneys surmounting all, and a general trimness 

 of appearance outside, which is by no means always correlated with 

 like conditions within — one is too apt at the outset to form a low esti- 

 mate of a Japanese house. An American finds it difiicult indeed to 



* From " Japanese Homcg and their Surroundings." By Edward S. Morse, Director 

 of the Peabody Academy of Science ; late Professor of Zoology, University of Tokio 

 Japan ; Member of the National Academy of Science ; Fellow of the American Academy 

 of Arts and Sciences, etc. With Illustrations by the Author. Boston : Ticknor & Co. 

 1886. 



