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Darwin Correspondence Project

From H. N. Moseley   30 April 1880

University of London, | Burlington Gardens. W.

April 30. 80

Dear Mr Darwin

My friend Mr F V Dickins who is an enthusiastic student of science is much discomposed at having fallen more or less under your censure in Nature with regard to the Japanese shells heaps.1 I hope you will not mind my troubling you with a short account of him.

He is a MB and BSc of this University having taken both degrees in the same year a feat I fancy never performed here by anyone else. He took a Medal in Physiology. He served some time as a Surgeon in the Navy but gave up the Medical profession and was called to the Bar. After practising in London some time he went to Japan in consequence of ill health and practised many years at Yokohama as a barrister, taking up especially cases in which Japanese interests and laws were at conflict with those of Europeans. He is a Chinese and Japanese scholar, speaking Japanese fluently and reading it also. He has translated several Japanese books and has one now in the press. He was for some time Editor and proprietor of the Japan Mail and wrote the greater part of it himself.

He is an expert systematic botanist and well versed in the Flora of Japan. He has given valuable collections of plants to Kew. I travelled with him for a month in Japan and have constantly corresponded with him till he came to live in England. He is well read in all branches of science and reads most European languages. I have always regarded him as a man of most remarkable ability.

Profr Morses theories as to the refuse-heaps were discussed in the Japan Mail when he first enunciated them and I read the discussion.2 It seemed to be the general opinion in Japan that Morse was a charlatan   I have spoken to Mr A Agassiz and others about him and I gather that he is not thought much of.3

Amongst scientific men in the U.S. Mr Dickins has told me in conversation that he believes he was even at fault in identifying human bones and certain that he was wrong about the identification of bones of mammalia. I think his conclusions ought at all events to be taken cum grano.4

Two points in Morses letter to you published in Nature strike me as singular. Firstly he professes ignorance as to whether Mr Dickins has ever been in Japan. I do not think it possible that he cannot have known Dickins name and something of his doings in Japan. Moreover when Morse first went to Japan he sent me a circular asking for copies of monographs for Yedo library and promising to send publications in exchange. In writing to him I advised him to make the acquaintance of Dickins as a man who would sympathize with him in all scientific matters.

Secondly the sneer at Dickins because he does not adopt the newfangled term for Yedo. “Tokio” shows that Morse can have learnt very little of the language or history of Japan.5

I should certainly take Dickins estimate of the Japanese ardour for antiquarian science in Yedo as far more likely to come near the truth than Morses. The Japanese are absolutely ignorant of their own early history and even I believe of that of the last few centuries in great measure.

Dickins has had many law pupils and it is highly improbable that Morse has anything like the facility in conversing with the Japanese in their own language that he has.

I hope you will excuse this long letter. Dickins has studied your books with care and though he does not mind what Morse says about him feels hurt at having fallen under your displeasure   I promised to write and explain to you that he is a man of considerable and varied information.

Yours truly H N Moseley

Footnotes

See letter to Nature, 9 April [1880] and n. 2. Edward Sylvester Morse had written to CD, enclosing a letter to Nature responding to a review of his work by Frederick Victor Dickins (letter from E. S. Morse, 23 March 1880). CD forwarded Morse’s letter along with his own letter to the journal.
The Japan Mail was a fortnightly English-language newspaper, partly subsidised by the Japanese government (Perez 1999, p. 81). The review of Morse’s memoir on the Omori shell mounds (Morse 1879) praised the author’s ability and also noted that the production of the work had been done entirely locally (Japan Mail, 20 September 1879, pp. 496–7).
Alexander Agassiz was curator of the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology.
Cum grano salis: with a grain of salt (Latin).
‘Edo’ or ‘Yedo’ was the name of the city of Tokyo during the Tokugawa Shogunate (1603–1868); the city was renamed Tokyo (sometimes transliterated as Tokio, meaning ‘eastern capital’) in 1868 with the restoration of imperial power (Meiji Restoration); for more on the effects of the restoration on the city, see Iwatake 2003.

Bibliography

Iwatake, Mikako. 2003. From a Shogunal city to a life city: Tokyo between two fin-de-siècles. In Japanese capitals in historical perspective: place, power and memory in Kyoto, Edo and Tokyo, edited by Nicolas Fiévé and Paul Waley. London; New York: RoutledgeCurzon.

Morse, Edward Sylvester. 1879. Shell mounds of Omori. Memoirs of the Science Department, University of Tokio, Japan 1: 1–36.

Perez, Louis G. 1999. Japan comes of age: Mutsu Munemitsu and the revision of the unequal treaties. Madison, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press. London: Associated University Presses.

Summary

F. V. Dickins feels hurt at CD’s censure of him over the Omori shell mound controversy [see Collected papers 2: 222–3]. Dickins is well educated in science and long familiar with Japan, having been editor of the Japan Mail. In Japan, E. S. Morse is considered a charlatan, and American scientists, e.g., A. Agassiz, have a low opinion of him.

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12595
From
Henry Nottidge Moseley
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
University of London, Burlington Gardens
Source of text
DAR 171: 259
Physical description
ALS 8pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12595,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12595.xml

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