Abstract
THE United States in 1852 sent an expedition under Commander Perry to Japan, followed by another vessel the next year. The expedition was really an expression of American expansion as a Pacific Power, whatever may have been its explantion at the time. It marked, too, the emergence of Japan from the centuries of exclusion from contact with the outer world and its opening to American European trade. Among the many men of science who applied to join this expedition, J. Morrow was chosen, and sailed to join his ship in 1853. The choice was a wise one. He was to take to the East, chiefly Japan, seeds, plants and agricultural implements, and to collect those of Japan for American nurseries and possibly for the improvement of American agriculture. All this he assiduously did in very limited time ashore and made some of the first studies on monsoon agriculture. His journal was to have been published with Perry's official narrative about a century ago ; but somehow or other it was overlooked until to-day. It is now published with a few notes and lists of seeds and implements brought from Japan and those given to the Emperor. A few letters from Morrow are also printed. The book gives vivid impressions of Japan and several smaller islands as they were before European influence made its mark.
A Scientist with Perry in Japan
The Journal of Dr. James Morrow. Edited by Allan B. Cole. Pp. xxvi + 307 + 9 plates. (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1947.) 22s net.
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A Scientist with Perry in Japan. Nature 164, 87 (1949). https://doi.org/10.1038/164087c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/164087c0