THE ENTOMOLOGIST’S 
WEEKLY INTELLIGENCER. 
No. 112.] SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 20, 1858. [Price Id. 
J E D D 0. 
The world has been much surprised 
lately to hear that the population of 
Jeddo equals that of London, and is 
far more civilized. Jeddo is the capital 
of Japan; but the Japanese empire 
has hitherto been always a sealed book 
to the rest of the world ; contented 
with their own productions, the Ja- 
panese cared not for foreign com- 
merce, and would have nothing to do 
with imports and exports. 
At first this sounds very strange, but 
why should it he so? Japan is an 
island, — it is separated by nature from 
the rest of the world; its “products 
are in great variety; the chief are rice, 
potatoes, gourds, numerous fruits com- 
mon in the South of Europe, hemp, 
cotton, ginger, tobacco, tea (in large 
quantity), oak, maple, iron-wood, cy- 
press and fir timber, varnish, camphor, 
iron, lead, tin, copper, bullion, dia- 
monds and other gems, coal, lime, sul- 
phur, nitre, salt and amber, fish, coral, 
pearls, &c., &c.” 
It is evident that Japan supplies all 
its own wants, and cares nothing for 
the products of other nations; perhaps 
the manufactures may hardly be as 
good, or as cheap, as those made 
elsewhere, — perhaps Nangasaki shawls 
may be of inferior value to shawls 
manufactured at Paisley, and possibly 
the cutlery of Jeddo may be less ser- 
viceable than that of Sheffield, — but 
the Japanese are true patriots, and 
prefer a bad article of real Japanese 
manufacture, however costly, to a good 
article produced in a foreign country, 
however cheap. 
One curious effect of this policy is 
to be seen in the Museums at Jeddo; 
they are exclusively confined to the 
productions of Japan, and hence the 
people — so highly civilized in other 
respects — are excessively ignorant of 
the forms which nature assumes in 
other countries, and the first of Japanese 
naturalists knows nothing of what is 
to be seen out of Japan. 
This exclusiveness naturally produces 
very one-sided ideas, and the demand 
for specimens, which, though scarce in 
Japan, abound on the Chinese coast, 
causes them to sell for perfectly fabu- 
lous prices, as much as £4 having 
been paid for one specimen of Cerura 
bicuspis ! 
I 
