26 
NATURE 
[May 13, 1886 
but sodium bisulphzfe is employed in the preparation 
of soluble alizarin-blue, or that the three formule given 
on p. 70 in a preliminary account of the products from 
tar, and described as those of “the three isomeric di- 
nitrobenzenes,” are in reality those of the three mono- 
nitrotoluenes—errata not corrected in the list—is open to 
doubt. 
Inconclusion, we cordially recommend the book. We 
trust that it will not only be made use of by students of 
technology as a useful introduction to the larger treatises 
in French and German, but that the ordinary student of 
organic chemistry will take the opportunity of making a 
closer acquaintance with a special branch of his subject, 
as fascinating from a scientific point of view as it is 
fertile in practical results. F. R. JAPP 
FAPANESE HOMES 
Fapanese Homes and their Surroundings. By Edward 
S. Morse, Director of the Peabody Academy of Science. 
(London: Sampson Low, 1886). 
je ASSOC Prof. Morse’s connection with Japan 
has been comparatively short and interrupted, few 
men have done so much for scientific progress in that 
country. About ten years ago he first visited Japan in 
order to study certain forms of ocean life on its coasts, 
and, fortunately, was induced to accept the Chair of 
Zoology in the University of Tokio. While holding this 
office he did much to arouse an interest in the minds of 
his students for biological research, and he established a 
Biological Society, which is, we believe, still at work. 
By his discovery and thorough investigation of the shell- 
mounds at Omori, near Tokio, he stimulated prehistoric 
studies. His monograph on these mounds—although 
perhaps his theory as to the builders may not, on more 
extended examination, have proved tenable—was followed 
by a number of publications on the Japanese Stone Age, 
cave-dwellers, and the like ; and in many less generally 
known directions his influence on the advance of science 
in Japan has been a beneficial and stimulating one. His 
first visit to Japan has been followed by two others, during 
which he visited all parts of the country, as well as other 
regions of Eastern Asia, and has collected material on a 
variety of matters. The present volume is a monograph 
on the house in Japan ;—the different types of houses, 
their mode of construction, the uses of each part, | 
the varieties in each from the roof to the foundation, 
the types and uses of household utensils, &c. The 
illustrations, which are beautiful, are also very nu- 
merous, being, on the average, about one to a 
page. Without them it would, indeed, be diffi- 
cult for readers who are not well acquainted with 
Japanese houses to follow the descriptions. Many of 
these details Prof. Morse thinks it may soon be difficult, 
if not impossible, to obtain, and therefore like an old 
Japanese to whom he refers, and who “held it a solemn 
duty to learn any art or accomplishment that might be 
going out of the world, and then to describe it so fully 
that it might be preserved to posterity,” he now describes 
and copies them for the benefit of future generations who 
may not have the opportunity of seeing these evidences 
of Japanese skill and sense of beauty. We do not | 
apprehend that the Japanese will ever change so far as 
to substitute the jerry-builder for their own carpenters, 
and we do not think that their style of architecture will 
ever greatly alter, for the simple reason that they have 
now what, on the whole, is the fittest. Nevertheless we 
cannot but be grateful to Prof. Morse for making the 
Japanese house, inside and out, so familiar to English 
readers. His work is so clear and detailed that we see 
no reason why any one who feels so disposed should not 
be able to erect for himself a home in the Japanese style 
in England. 
In the eighth chapter indications from the most ancient 
works in Japanese literature are collected together in 
order to catch a glimpse of what the Japanese house of a 
thousand years ago was like. It would be useless with- 
out a plan of the modern house before us, to refer to 
these beyond quoting Prof. Morse’s conclusion that they 
are significant indications of the marked southern affini- 
ties of the Japanese, and he thinks that, from all we can 
gather relating to the ancient house of the Japanese, it 
would seem that certain important resemblances must be 
sought forin Annam, Cochin China, and particularly in the 
Malay peninsula—but not amongst the Ainos. This is 
another nail in the coffin of the theory of an ethnic 
relationship of the latter with the Japanese. On the 
whole, Prof. Morse’s theory of the history of house deve- 
lopment in Japan is a slow but steady progress from the 
rude hut of the past to the curious and artistic house of 
to-day—a house as thoroughly a product of Japan as is 
that of the Chinese, Corean, or Malay a product of these 
peoples, and differing from all quite as much as they differ 
from one another. It has just those features incorporated 
into it that might be expected from its physical proximity 
to, and historical relations with, China and Corea. The 
last chapter deals with the ‘‘neighbouring house ”—that 
is, Corean, Chinese, Aino, and Loochooan houses. In 
this chapter the writer has fallen into a curious error in 
describing Hachijo Island as one of the Bonins. There 
is no more connection between the two than there is 
between Iceland and the Isle of Wight. Hachij6 has 
from the earliest times been Japanese ; it was at one time 
a place of exile for political offenders. The Bonins never 
belonged to Japan until within the last few years; as the 
name (&z or JZ Nin, without people) implied, they were 
uninhabited, except by a few waifs and strays thrown up 
by the sea—Caroline Islanders, deserters from whalers 
and ships of war. The account of the visit to Hachijé, 
from which Prof. Morse quotes, was published some years 
ago in the Zyavsactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 
and is of exceptional interest, for in this island may still 
be observed ancient Japanese customs which have long 
fallen into desuetude on the mainland. Thus the peculiar 
lustration ceremonies, the special parturition houses, &c, 
now found in Hachijé, are mentioned in ancient Japanese 
works as common toall Japanese. The difficulty of access 
to the island from the adjacent mainland on account of 
dangerous currents would explain the presence of this 
little oasis of antiquity. There is this excuse, however, 
for Prof. Morse’s confusion of the Bonin Islands with 
Hachijo, that the expedition set out for the Bonins, but 
the writers about Hachijé went no farther than that island, 
and there, while awaiting the return of the steamer, col- 
lected the material for the paper in question. 
