I04 SECTION A. GENERAL ZOOLOGY. 



channel thus opened. It is not possible to overestimate the effect 

 of the new acquisition on the progress of Japan. Suffice it here 

 to say that the country would not be what it is to-day but for this 

 leaven which had been working through and through the whole 

 mass of society for over a hundred years before the Restoration 

 of 1868 enabled it to bear its legitimate fruit. This innovation, 

 together with the visits of Thunberg (1775) and Siebold (1821), 

 had due effect upon the Natural History studies also. The system 

 of Linne, especially in regard to plants, seems to have been well 

 grasped, with very little delay. The most famous productions of the 

 new school on Natural History subjects are probably ' Shoktigakii 

 Keigen^' (Elements of Botanical Science) by Udagawa Yoan, 1835 ; 

 and ' Sojiioku Zicsetsii' (Icones Plantarum) by linuma Yokusai, 

 1832 ; — the latter being a standard work at the present day. It 

 is perhaps a circumstance interesting enough to record, that a work 

 on the use of the microscope was published in 1801." 



I have gone somewhat more extensively than I intended into 

 the past of the Natural History studies in Japan, because I wished 

 to show in one concrete case that the soil on which the seeds 

 of modern science were sown in Japan was by no means barren or 

 unprepared. If you look into the matter slightly, I think you will 

 find that the development of modern sciences in Japan is but 

 natural, that there is nothing forced about it, and that it was bound 

 to follow as the necessary consequences of the given antecedents. 

 I hope therefore that you will not regard us as sudden upstarts, 

 but rather as those who have for a long time developed inde- 

 pendently along a different line, but have recently converged 

 towards that followed by other civilized nations of the world. 



Historically, the study of modern Zoology dates from the 

 creation of the chair of zoology in the T5ky6 University in 1877 

 and the appointment of Prof. Morse of America as the first 

 occupant of that chair. Twenty years are not a very long time, but 

 a generation of zoologists representing various branches of our 

 science has since arisen, and I may perhaps be allowed to claim 

 that at least a very fair start has been made. 



If any of you should visit Japan at the present day, I think 

 you will soon find that the Zoological Institute of the Science 

 College in the Tokyo University is the centre of zoological activity 

 in Japan. — Although I myself am intimately connected with it, and 

 my colleague Prof Ijima and I have charge of the Institute, I think 

 I can safely claim this distinction for it without appearing immodest, 



^ This work treated of the morphology of plants from quite a modern point. It was 

 customary in those days for a friend of the author of a work to write the preface. In this 

 case it was my grandfather who stood thus as a sort of sponsor, and you will perhaps 

 allow me a bit of family pride and let me say that he was very sound in his views. He 

 contended that apart from what might be called the mere natural history studies, plants 

 should be dissected and their structure studied, and that this should form the basis of the 

 botanical science, just as the dissection of the human and animal bodies serves as the basis 

 for the science of Anatomy. 



