Japan and the Japanese

488 JAPAN. A. D. 18171850.
Bions, is Dr. Philipp Franz Von Siebold, who was sent out, in
commissioned by the Dutch government, to make all possible inves-
tigations, as well into the language, literature and institutions, as
into the natural history of the country. The Japanese interpreters
understood Dutch so well as to detect his foreign accent, but they
were satisfied with the explanation that he was a Dutch mountain-
eer. He availed himself, as Kiimpfer had done, of all means that
offered to elude the restrictive laws; and he found, like Thunberg
and Titsingh, a certain number of the natives very anxious to obtain
information, and by no means unwilling secretly to impart it.
In 182G, he accompanied Van Sturlen, the director, on the
quadriennial journey to Jedo, taking with him a young na-
tive physician, a native artist, and several servants to assist his
researches into natural history. Following, as Fisscher had done,
nearly or quite in Kiimpfer's old route, he saw, in the passage across
Kiusiu, the same old camphor-tree, as flourishing, apparently, as
it had been a hundred and thirty-five years before, but with a hollow
in its trunk large enough to hold fifteen men. He visited the
same hot
springs, and descended some sixty feet into the coal mine,
near Kokura, mentioned by Kiimpfer. He saw only one thin seam
of coal, but was told of thicker ones below an account which the
coal drawn up seemed to confirm.
At Jedo he met with many Japanese physicians, astronomers and
others, of whose acquisitions he speaks with much respect.
Besides the other means, already pointed out, of measuring time,
he saw in use there Chinese clysedrus, or water-clocks ; but the
method most relied upon for scientific purposes was a clock, of which
the idea was derived from one introduced into China by the Jesuit
Ricci, and brought thence to Japan. This clock is worked by two
balances, one to act by day and the other by night. The arm of
each balance is notched, to accord with the variations in the length
of the hours. At the summer solstice the weights are hung respec-
tively upon the outermost notch of the day-balance, and upon the
innermost notch of the
night-balance. At intervals of six days,
that of the
four hours and twelve minutes, both weights are moved ;
day-balance a notch inward, that of the night-balance a notch out-
ward, until at the winter solstice their original positions are reversed
After Siebold's return to Nagasaki, he continued diligently IP