THE QUARTERLY 
JOURNAL OF SCIENCE. 
OCTOBER, 1876. 
I. JAPANESE MINES. 
* T is certain that in almost every portion of the empire 
of Japan minerals of various kinds are found, and it is 
equally certain that in numberless parts of the country 
mines have been worked, with more or less success, for 
centuries. So says the Hon. F. R. Plunkett in a recent 
Report to our Foreign Office, and under his guidance we 
will endeavour to see how, unaided by the means and appli- 
ances of modern science, that strange and long-isolated race 
— with whose ways we are only now, in the last quarter of 
the nineteenth century, gradually becoming somewhat more 
familiar — contrived, during her ages of seclusion, to make 
the earth give up her mineral wealth. The interior of Japan 
and its resources are still so little known to foreigners that 
Mr. Plunkett, even with the advantages of his official 
position, could hardly have hoped to achieve any very satis- 
factory result in the course of his investigations, had not 
the Japanese Government placed at his disposal the valuable 
information in their possession, and had not their chief 
mining engineer, as well as the metallurgist of the Imperial 
Mint at Osaka, rendered him most efficient aid in the prose- 
cution of his researches. With such assistance, however, 
and by careful observation on his own part, he has collected 
a mass of useful statistics, as well as much curious and 
interesting information. 
With one solitary exception, where foreign skill has been 
availed of with good results, the mines of Japan are still 
attacked exclusively by adits, for the natives never sink a 
shaft, and, as they have nothing more powerful than bamboo 
pumps for lifting water, it is easily conceivable how soon 
VOL. vi. (n.s.) 2 p 
