1 894 . NA T URA L SCIENCE IN J A PA N. 25 



botanical knowledge came originally from China, and so they denoted 

 not only these introduced plants, but also the common native ones, by 

 Chinese characters. From Thunberg, however, they had also 

 received the Linnean names, and remembered them with pleasure. 

 In their rare intercourse with either botanists or their books, it was 

 hardly to be expected that they should have made a systematic study 

 of botany; "nevertheless," says Von Siebold, " I have often won- 

 dered at the exactness and dexterity with which they distinguish 

 the slightly differing species of a complicated genus and define their 

 varieties." And, again, he tells us how the Japanese paint flowers, 

 both wild and cultivated, so accurately that one can easily dis- 

 tinguish genera and species. A beautiful example of a Japanese 

 botanical work of this period is the Honzo Zufu, by Iwasaki 

 Tsunemasa, Yedo, 1828, of which a copy, belonging to Mr. A. Bisset, 

 is deposited in the library of the Botanical Department of the British 

 Museum. 



The study of Zoology had prospered less ; for investigations into 

 the qualities of animals seemed to this herbivorous nation less 

 necessary and useful than into those of plants. "At the same time," 

 says Von Siebold, " they have a very accurate knowledge of such 

 animals as do happen to be of any use to them, especially of fish, 

 crustaceans, shell-fish, and certain other molluscs. They often form 

 collections of shells, and make various articles out of them. In all 

 their collections they value a thing the more for its montrosity. 

 They carefully preserve all deformities and oddities that Nature has 

 chanced to issue from her mint, and what Nature is unable or 

 unwilling to produce, they manufacture by art." The Mermaids and 

 Dragons composed of parts of different animals joined by papier mache, 

 such as are still to be seen in the museums attached to certain 

 temples, are described by Von Siebold, who admits that they so 

 rivalled nature as easily to deceive the eyes of a tyro. " They have 

 even," he exclaims, " attempted to deceive me with a human foetus 

 made monstrous by their craft. Frogs and tortoises with super- 

 numerary heads or limbs they esteem as rarities. The vogue of these 

 artifices is shown by the fact that they are exposed for sale at 

 exorbitant prices. The love of lucre invents fresh monsters from day 

 to day, and is a strange stimulus to zoological labours. To this end 

 they keep deer, bears and monkeys, also white rats, hares and rabbits, 

 and they rear the rarer birds which they collect from remote pro- 

 vinces and even from China. Although the works of Linnaeus may 

 be found here and there, chiefly in the city of Yedo, and though his 

 method of description may in some cases have been followed by the 

 Japanese, nevertheless I have never found traces of any systematic 

 zoology, while the pictures of many mammals, said to be native in 

 the interior of Japan, display nothing characteristic, although at a 

 first glance you would have called them well painted, since their 

 colouring is true to life. These same drawings of the animal 



