Abstract
THE last number of the Verhandlungen der Gesellschaft für Erdkunde of Berlin contains a paper by Prof. Brauns, late of Japan, on the Island of Yezo. The writer agrees with Mr. Keane and other ethnologists that the Ainos are a totally different race from the Japanese. The number of these people in Yezo and the Kuriles is given by the Japanese Government as 18,000, but many authors place the number as high as 50,000. In Saghalin there are 10,000 to 12,000, and if those in the southern part of Kamschatka who are living under Russian rule are included, the total number of the race would probably be from 60,000 to 70,000. In the same issue the indefatigable explorer of the Philippines, Herr Jagor, describes briefly a recent journey through Luzon. An interesting communication also is a list of the papers published by the Geographical Society of Tokio in its volume for 1880. This Society is composed, we believe, almost wholly of natives, and its papers are printed in Japanese. There appear to have been in all thirty-eight communications of one kind or another; the writers or translators (for some of the papers are apparently translations from others in European languages) are in all cases Japanese. Among the papers are several on the history and geography of Okinawa, as the Japanese call the Loochoo group; the climate of Peking; Japanese intercourse with foreign countries in the middle ages; a journey to Vladivostock; Ihe history of geography in Japan; history and geography of Persia by a Japanese who had travelled through the country; description of Australia; description of a voyage in the Persian Gulf; of a journey on the Khirgiz steppes; ancient Japanese geographical names; description of Saghalin; on the absence of precious stones in Japan, &c., &c. Some of these papers would hardly meet-with a favourable reception from the Council of the Royal Geographical Society; but in Japan they are listened to and read afterwards in their printed form by hundreds of people who have never left their own country, and who possess but a very small geographical literature. When this is remembered, the list will appear not only a creditable one to the travellers, but also a most useful one for the spread of geographical knowledge in Japan, which after all is the purpose of the Society.
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Geographical Notes . Nature 28, 90–91 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/028090a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/028090a0