26 NATURAL SCIENCE. Jan.. 1894. 



kingdom furnish another example of the peculiar mental attitude of 

 the Japanese, since they fashion for themselves with their brush many 

 birds and butterflies that are certainly not native nor have ever been 

 seen. Still I admire their finer pictures of fish and butterflies drawn 

 according to nature." 



Geology is next treated of by Von Siebold. " I observed," he 

 writes, "that the medical men whom I met daily could well distin- 

 guish the common minerals, such as Antimony and Zinc, and define 

 them by their Dutch, Japanese, and even Chinese names. But in 

 private collections of minerals, I have noticed, as above, that they 

 chiefly esteem and preserve monstrosities. Hence fossil animals, 

 fossil plants, with other stones curiously shaped by nature or chance, 

 form the rarities of their co.'lections." Obviously, though the Japanese 

 collected fossils, they were not palaeontologists ; they even confused 

 fragments of corals with simple stones. That they were excellent 

 metallurgists, however, the fame of their copper, iron, brass, silver, 

 gold, and gold alloy, is sufficient proof. They were also not ignorant 

 of how to treat minerals by chemical operations, and made many 

 preparations of mercury. 



In conclusion, Von Siebold emphasises the desire of the Japanese 

 for knowledge and their aptitude for investigation. He founded a 

 medical college (which must have been in Nagasaki before he went 

 to Tokio) and employed his students collecting specimens. Among 

 interpreters and other natives he found "a liking and singular ability 

 for natural history, excited partly by scientific, partly by pecuniary 

 reasons." " In two weeks," he says, " I taught a Japanese youth 

 the art of drying plants and all the methods of taxidermy, so that 

 every day I more and more admired his manner of preparing 

 specimens." Lastly, the more learned Japanese "lose no opportunity 

 of gaining knowledge from European books." 



My readers have by this time, if my attempt has been successful, 

 gained some idea of the ground in which, when at last the fence was 

 broken down, the seed of Western science was to be sown. And by 

 this time they will be getting anxious to learn how the plant has 

 flourished and what fruit it bears at the present day. This it will be 

 the main object of the second portion of this paper to inform them. 



F. A. Bather. 



[To be continued.) 



