i894. NATURAL SCIENCE IN JAPAN. loi 



that serve the Japanese as food. A walk through the Tokio fish- 

 market about four o'clock in the morning reveals a wonderland to the 

 eyes of the naturalist. Every possible and impossible variety of 

 fish, flapping and twisting and twining in shallow tubs ; sharks and 

 threshers, waiting to be cut up into steaks or pounded into a kind of 

 pemmican ; large octopods and cuttlefish angrily writhing in buckets 

 and vainly changing their colours ; shell-fish of every shape and hue, 

 but chiefly Area and the beautiful Haliotis. Nothing seems to be 

 thrown away, and the consequence is that many rarities are secured 

 for the University, while ordinary dissecting material may be had 

 almost for the asking. Before leaving the Zoological Museum, we 

 must notice some admirable anatomical models by Matsutaro 

 Kikuchi, especially those representing the blood-vascular system of 

 Bufo japonica and the blood-vascular and nervous systems of Palinurus 

 japonicus. In such work as this the handiness and extreme delicacy 

 of the Japanese are seen to the best advantage. 



The Geological Museum is in a large X -shaped room on the 

 ground floor. It has been arranged by the Geologist Koto, the 

 Mineralogist Kikuchi and the Palaeontologist Yokoyama. The 

 minerals are arranged in two distinct sets ; one to illustrate their 

 physical properties, the other according to their chemical compo- 

 sition. Accompanying them is a catalogue, written in English. As 

 in the British Museum, the general collection of fossils is arranged 

 in zoological order, while the specimens found in the country itself 

 are kept separate. These latter include the types of von 

 Mojsisovics, who has described so many of the Triassic fossils of 

 Japan, and the types of Yokoyama. Owing to the volcanic nature 

 of the Japanese islands, such fossils as do occur are for the most 

 part in a very altered condition, and are neither numerous nor well- 

 preserved enough to be advantageously arranged according to a 

 zoological classification ; they are therefore disposed stratigraphi- 

 cally and according to their localities. The Museum also contains a 

 general series of rocks. Besides the specimens of rocks and fossils 

 at present exhibited, there are a large number that have been col- 

 lected by students and are still kept in boxes downstairs awaiting 

 identification. To judge from the state in which most of the fossils 

 unfortunately occur, this will prove a difficult matter. 



Connected with the Science College are the four following 

 institutions, the Astronomical Observatory, the Seismological 

 Observatory, the Botanic Garden and the Marine Biological Station. 



The Seismological Observatory is the head-quarters of this 

 branch of science for the whole world, and to this position it has been 

 brought by the labours of Professors J. A. Ewing and John Milne. 

 The instruments designed here and the results obtained by them are 

 so well-known from the publications of those gentlemen and of Seikei 

 Sekiya, the Professor of Seismology, that it is unnecessary to allude 

 to them further in this place. It is enough to mention that the 



