92 NATURAL SCIENCE. August. 



and Ovohanche in the division * Mountain herbs.' The Japanese 

 scholars, though they might be childish admirers of the Chinese 

 authorities, did not hesitate to remove these plants to another division, 

 ' the Fungi.' Though this may seem laughable to modern botanists, 

 still it implies the existence of the idea of parasitism or saprophytism, 

 a conception which must have been based on long-continued observa- 

 tions ; and it must be remembered that a European taxonomist so 

 recent as Lindley esteemed physiological functions as of major im- 

 portance in the arrangement of the vegetable kingdom. Thus the 

 germ of science was not utterly wanting among the naturalists of old 

 Japan. In the days of Kaempfer,it is true, the naturalist, properly so 

 called, was very rare in Japan, the few that existed being rather 

 Confucianist or medical scholars. But when Siebold arrived, the 

 naturalist had already been developed by the efforts of many, among 

 whom Ranzan Ono was conspicuous. This man, eulogised by 

 Savatier as ' le Linne du Japon,' has left as his memorial the great 

 ' Guide to the Study of Materia ]\Iedica,' which embodied his 

 researches among Japanese and Chinese literature on botanj^, zoology, 

 and mineralogy. Iwasaki Tsunemasa, mentioned on p. 25, was his 

 pupil. 



" To the causes that I mentioned as hindering the progress of 

 science in Japan, Mr. Minakata adds the inattention of Europeans to 

 what was and is doing in that country. This it was the aim of my 

 paper to help to counteract." 



The Hongkong Plague. 



We cannot leave the Far East without referring to the plague 

 now decimating the Chinese dwellers in our city of Victoria. 



Among us modern sanitation seems to have stamped out some of 

 the deadlier pestilences that once prevailed. In London and most of 

 our large towns, typhus fever, at least in epidemic form, is almost a 

 thing of the past, and it may be doubted whether the oriental plague 

 couJd obtain much foothold in this country, even if conveyed hither. 

 There is little reason to doubt that this epidemic is identical with the 

 Black Death of the fourteenth century, and the Plague of the seven- 

 teenth. As in the case of typhus fever, the essential conditions for its 

 propagation appear to be filth and overcrowding, and in these respects 

 China is probably worse than was our own country in the Middle 

 Ages. That the virus is a living organism few will doubt, and it 

 must be an inspiriting thing to the mind of a bacteriologist to have 

 the chance of studying a mediaeval pestilence with appliances and 

 methods of the most approved modern kinds. Professor Kitasato, of 

 Tokio, is already on the spot, and is asserted to have discovered in 

 the glandular swellings a bacillus characteristic of the disease. The 

 details of his observations will be awaited with interest by patholo- 

 gists, since" few could have hoped that the Black Death would ever 

 be traced to its ultimate cause in so modern an organism as a bacillus. 



Sewer Air. 

 Turning to similar dangers nearer home, faulty drains and sewer 

 air are among those regarded by the householder with especial 



