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Darwin Correspondence Project

From E. S. Morse   23 March 1880

Salem Mass.

Mar 23rd 80

My dear Sir.

I have been much annoyed by a review of my Omori Mound Memoir in the pages of Nature March 12th by a Mr. Dickins. I had hoped that the Editors of that journal would have at least done me the simple justice of placing my Memoir in the hands of some Archaeologist. I am sure that Mr Dickins has never made a contribution either on Archaeology, Zoology or Ceramic studies.1

I do desire above all things a fair review from one competent to judge the leading points of the work.

I dislike to defend my work against such an ill spirited and untruthful review as this one of Mr Dickins   I write fully aware of your precious time, yet thinking that possibly you might induce some one to notice the leading features of the memoir, namely the full illustration of the pottery tablets etc. the evidences of Cannabilism: which none dispute. the remarkable change in fauna which you so kindly wrote to me about.2

I desire such a review especially for those kind japanese friends who take “Nature” and who published the memoir for me at great trouble and expense.

I take the liberty of sending you my Review of Mr Dickin’s article thinking that if you sent it to Nature it might more promptly or likely appear.3

Asking you to excuse this intrusion | I remain | with profound respect | Very faithfully yrs | Edwd S. Morse.

[Enclosure]

IN NATURE, vol. xxi. p. 350, is a review of my memoir on “The Omori Shell Mounds” by Fredk. V. Dickins.4 I do not now heed the spirit in which it is written, nor would I deem it worthy of notice did it not occur in the pages of your widely-read magazine. One expects in a reviewer some knowledge of the subject he reviews. Mr. Dickins, by a series of mistakes, betrays his ignorance of the whole matter. The extraordinary blunder he makes regarding the Ainos has already been promptly corrected by a Japanese gentleman residing in London.5 It is charitable to assume that Mr. Dickins has not lived in Japan, otherwise he would not, in common with so many of his countrymen, commit the wilful blunder of calling the principal city of the empire by its wrong name.6 On the other hand, it is impossible he could have seen the Omori deposits, otherwise he would not make another blunder by expressing his belief that they have been completely swept away, when in truth but a small portion of them have been removed. He says: “These mounds consist for the most part of shells, little, if at all, distinguishable from what are still found in abundance along the shores of the Gulf of Yedo”. Had he taken the trouble to read the memoir he attempted to review he would have seen that all the species occurring in the mounds vary in size, proportion of parts, and relative abundance of individuals from similar species living along the shores to-day. That some species extremely abundant in the mounds are scarcely met within the vicinity, while one species has never been found within 400 miles of Omori; indeed, it belongs to a different zoological province!

His complaint at the large number of plates given to the illustration of pottery, tablets, &c., shows how incapabIe he is of appreciating that part of the work which has received the highest commendation from archæologists, namely, the presenting as far as possible an exhaustive illustration of every form of vessel and variety of ornamentation. He laments the absence of a plate giving figures of the bones and shells, especially of the latter, which are stated to belong to extinct species. Had he looked at the last plate (a copper plate, by the way, and not a lithographic one, as he calls it) he would have seen every species, with one exception, figured, when similar forms from the neighbouring shores could be got for comparison.7

I did not feel justified in comparing shell-mound forms with similar forms from Niigata, Kobe, or Nagasaki, and the reason will be obvious to anyone having the slightest familiarity with the variations that species show in widely separated localities. As to figuring fragments of bones, I did all that my limited knowledge of mammalian osteology would permit in identifying the common mammals, and in giving a list of them as other writers have done in similar investigations. Possibly Mr. Dickins may here find a fruitful field for investigation, in which he may establish the recent nature of the deposits. I cheerfully proffer to him a large accumulation of fragments of bones in Tokio waiting to be put together!

His comparison of the Omori pottery with Banko will greatly amuse anyone at all familiar with Banko, or its associate forms, Hansuki, Otagukuan, Miki, Bashodo, Tokonabe, or their imitators either ancient or modem.

His review being thus occupied with a series of misstatements, he naturally finds no room to discuss my evidences of cannibalism or platycnemic tibiæ.

Finally, his ungenerous complaint of my well-merited compliment to the Japanese printers and binders who made the pamphlet, illustrates a lamentable but too common trait of the ordinary Briton in Japan, namely, that which manifests itself in a childish delight at the failures of the Japanese and in sneers at their successes.

Edward S. Morse

Salem, Mass., U.S., March 25

Footnotes

Frederick Victor Dickins’s review of Morse’s Shell mounds of Omori (Morse 1879) was published in Nature, 12 February 1880, p. 350. The editor of Nature was Joseph Norman Lockyer. Dickins was a naval surgeon who collected plants and translated Japanese works (ODNB).
See Morse 1879, plates 1–15, and pp. 17–19. CD had commented on a proof-copy of Morse 1879 (see Correspondence vol. 27, letter to E. S. Morse, 21 October 1879).
The original enclosure has not been found; the text has been transcribed from the published version in Nature, 15 April 1880, pp. 561–2. For CD’s covering letter, see letter to Nature, 9 April [1880].
See n. 1, above.
In a note in Nature, 19 February 1880, p. 371, Shigetake Sugiura said that Dickins was incorrect in arguing that Omori heaps found Eastern region of the main island were works by an Aino race dating to the thirteenth or fourteenth century because Ainos were expelled from the area long before.
In Nature, 12 February 1880, p. 350, Dickins had used ‘Yedo’, a romanised form of the former name for Tokyo.
See Morse 1879, plate 18.

Bibliography

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

ODNB: Oxford dictionary of national biography: from the earliest times to the year 2000. (Revised edition.) Edited by H. C. G. Matthew and Brian Harrison. 60 vols. and index. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2004.

Summary

Offended by F. V. Dickins’ review [Nature 21 (1880): 350] of his Omori mound paper. Asks CD to have it reviewed elsewhere and encloses a letter to Nature he wants CD to forward. [See 12571.]

Letter details

Letter no.
DCP-LETT-12544
From
Edward Sylvester Morse
To
Charles Robert Darwin
Sent from
Salem, Mass.
Source of text
DAR 171: 247; Nature, 15 April 1880, pp. 561–2
Physical description
ALS 4pp

Please cite as

Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 12544,” accessed on 28 March 2024, https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/?docId=letters/DCP-LETT-12544.xml

letter