35° 



NATURE 



\Feb. 12, i 



demonstrates most perfectly the proportionality of the 

 spaces described to the squares of the times employed 

 in their description. In this connection should also be 

 mentioned his valuable inventions of the dynameter of 

 rotation, and the dynametric crank. In 1S53-1S54, 

 Morin communicated a most valuable series of ex- 

 perimental results on the resistance of building materials, 

 by means of which he established several important prin- 

 ciples of practical application in the solution of archi- 

 tectural problems. Among less prominent researches, 

 mention should be made of those on gun-cotton (1849 , on 

 the production of carbon monoxide in rooms heated by 

 iron stoves (1869), and on the preservation of flour (1870). 



As an author, General Morin is best known by his two 

 works "Logons de Mecanique pratique" and "Resistance 

 des Materiaux" (1853); as well as by able reports on 

 various technical and military inventions referred to him 

 by the French War Department and the Academy of 

 Sciences. 



General Marin's executive abilities have long been 

 appreciated and utilised at Paris. After occupying for 

 some time the chair of mechanics at the Conservatoire 

 des Arts et Metiers, he was appointed director of this 

 important establishment in 1S49. Under the thirty years 

 of his rigime the efficiency and influence of the Conser- 

 vatoire has been vastly increased and strengthened, 

 until it has become the chief auxiliary in elevating and 

 educating the artisan classes of the French capital. In 

 1855, General Morin occupied the difficult and trying 

 position of president of the commission for the first 

 Universal Exhibition held at Paris. In 1862 he was 

 elected president of the French Society of Civil Engineers. 

 Since 183S, he has been a grand officer in the Legion of 

 Honour. He was elected a member of the French 

 Academy of Sciences in 1843, as successor to Coriolis 

 in the section of mechanics, and has always maintained 

 an influential position in the actions of that body. 



T. H N. 



PRE-HISTORIC MAN IN JAPAN 1 

 1\/T ^" MORSE seems to claim fur the shell-mounds 

 -'■'-*• lately investigated by him at Omori (wrongly spelled 

 Omori throughout his monograph), a small village a tew 

 miles from Yedo, an antiquity as high as that of the 

 Danish kitchen-middens. I cannot help thinking the 

 conclusion a hasty one, or, at least, not warranted by the 

 facts set forth in the monograph in question. The shell- 

 mounds are therein described as siiuate about half a mile 

 from the shore, and the principal heap is stated to be 

 some ninety metres in length by about four metres in 

 breadth. It is now, I believe, completely swept away. 



These mounds consist for the most part of shells, little, 

 if at all, distinguishable from what are still to be found 

 in abundance along the shores of the Gulf of Yedo, 

 mixed with fragments of pottery, implements of stone 

 and horn, clay ornaments and "tablets," together with 

 bones ot the monkey, bear, deer, dog, wild boar, and of 

 man, the human bones or their fragments being nearly 

 ;>s numerous as those of the remaining mammals. Of 

 the eighteen lithographed plates with which the mono- 

 embellished, fifteen are devoted to the delineation 

 of fragments of pottery, and one cannot but regret 

 th it some of this space was not used for drawings of 

 the bones and shells, especially of such of the latter as 

 are stated to belong to extinct species. A figure, too, of the 

 right lower jaw of the "large baboon-like ape" alleged 

 to be "certainly unlike anything found in Japan to day," 

 and supposed to belong to a species of cynopithicus (sic), 

 would have been a most welcome addition. The frag- 

 ments of pottery, of which drawings are given, do not 



loirs of the Soienco Department, University of Tokio, Japan," 

 vol 1 part 1. "Shell-mounds of Om 11." By 1. S. Morse, Pr fessor of 



1 niversitv of Tnl.i-,. Japan, PubLshcd by the University of 

 Jokio, Japan. Nissbuslia Printing Office, .--, ;g (1679'. 



tell us much. A coarse ware, with not very dissimila: 

 ornamentation, is not hard to .meet with in country 

 villages, and inferior specimens of the well-known 

 "banko" faience are commonly adorned with lines, 

 strokes, dots, and "hatchings," that bear no little resem- 

 blance to those delineated in Mr. Morse's figures. The 

 drawings and descriptions of the stone implements do not 

 help us towards pronouncing upon their antiquity. The 

 distance of the shell-mounds from the shore is in no way 

 remarkable, and does not of itself prove any change of 

 level since the period of their accumulation. Clear 

 evidence, however, but of a very different nature, may be 

 found in the neighbourhood of Yedo and Yokohama, of 

 alternate elevations and depressions of the land, and it is 

 probable that at the present day the waters of the Gulf of 

 Yedo arc slowly receding. Remains and traces of shell- 

 heaps of quite modern date are common enough in the 

 provinces of Musashi and Sagami, and doubtless else- 

 where also, at a considerable distance from the shore, 

 even far inland. I am inclined to believe that the dog is 

 not indigenous to Japan, but has been introduced from 

 China. The Japanese name"inu," indeed, seems to be 

 connected with the Chinese word for' dog "Kiuen"(cf. 

 Greek kvov, Latin canis). 1 Lastly, the "adzuma," or 

 eastern region of the main island was probably peopled 

 chiefly by an Aino race, up to the fourteenth or fifteenth 

 centuries. Yedo was not founded before the close of the 

 sixteenth century. Legend, indeed, tells us that Nikko 

 was "opened" by the Buddhist saint, Shodo shonin, in 

 the eighth century, and that shrines were erected there 

 towards the middle of the ninth century ; but it seems 

 probable that up to at least as late as the fourteenth 

 century the country east of the Hakond Pass/was princi- 

 pally inhabited by an aboriginal race. 



Upon these grounds, and in the absence of materials 

 for instituting a comparison between the mound-shells 

 and recent forms,^ I should hesitate to assign a hightr 

 antiquity to the Omori heaps than the thirteenth or 

 fourteenth century, and it seems to me more probable that 

 they were the work of an Aino race than of contempo- 

 raries of the builders of the Danish middens. The ques- 

 tion of cannibalism I have not space to discuss. We 

 know so little about the Ainos and their customs that it 

 is impossible to say whether these might or might no: 

 explain the occurrence of human bones in the heaps with- 

 out loading the memory of a docile and gentle folk with 

 the odious charge of anthropophagism. 



Some of Mr. Morse's statements require considerable 

 modification. The chronicles of Japan do not run back for 

 1,500 years, or for anything like that period. The legends- 

 run back, it is true, much farther, some millions of years 

 indeed, but the oldest Japanese book extant, the " Kojiki," 

 a mere collection of myths, was compiled in the eighth 

 century of our era. The art of writing was introduced 

 from China, hardly earlier than the sixth century, and the 

 annals of Japan up to quite recently presented such a 

 mixture of fact and fable that they are of but small his- 

 torical value. I must add that the statement in the pre- 

 face that " there is no other country in the world where so 

 great a number of gentlemen interested in archaeology 

 can be found as in Japan," is to me a most surprising 

 one. 



The lithographs are excellent, and the paper and typo- 

 graphy arc good ; but surely Mr. Morse will hardly please 

 his Japanese friends by patting them upon the back, as if 

 they were clever savages, because they have performed 

 the not very extraordinary feat of making paper with 

 European machinery, and under European superintend- 

 ence or instruction, and the still more insignificant one, 

 for some ten or fifteen years familiar to the native com- 

 positors of a dozen printing offices in Yokohama, of print- 

 ing a few score pages of English with tolerable clearness 

 and accuracy. Fredk. V. DlCKINS 



■ Dc£°s flesh is still eaten in some provinces. 



