INTRODUCTORY. 



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long peace of two hundred and fifty years which the rule of the 

 Tokugawa shoe/ uns secured for Japan, literature, the arts, and all 

 peaceful industries were developed with remarkable vigor and 

 rapidity, and that the study of Natural History shared in this pro- 

 gress. Apart from that innate love of Nature and the natural which 

 was ever showing itself in poetry and other arts, the study of 

 natural products was always pursued, ostensibly with the purpose 

 of collecting materia medica, or of discovering things that might 

 he used as food in case of a famine, or of identifying objects 

 mentioned in the Confucian classic, " Shi-King." But it is not 

 difficult to perceive that naturalists looked in reality beyond these 

 simple or utilitarian ends, and investigated animals and plants 

 for their own sake, although the principal aim of their researches 

 seems to have been the comparatively barren one of establishing 

 a relationship between Japanese products and those described in 

 various Chinese works on Natural History. Frequent were the 

 excursions and expeditions undertaken with the view of collecting 

 natural objects, among which plants were especial favorites, and 

 all parts of the country seem to have been tolerably well explored 

 in this way. Numerous were the treatises on Natural History, 

 published or unpublished. Many of these were encyclopedic in 

 their comprehensiveness and size, such as " Shobutsu Bilisan" by 

 Inao Jakusui, (1(300 parts, early in the eighteenth century], and 

 " Honzö Kömokn Keimo " by Ono Banz an (48 parts, 1803). The 

 last named naturalist was so famous for his extensive knowledge that 

 we are told, his pupils were nearly one thousand in number. My 

 colleague, Prof. Matsumura, in his book on the enumeration of 

 Japanese plant-names, gives 306 titles of Japanese works on botany 



