1841.
Notices of Japan, No. VIII.
221
These hours are always sounded by the bells of the temples. The measuring them seems a more difficult matter, although lengthening and shortening the pendulum is spoken of as sufficient for this purpose* (of course, daily, or twice a day, at sunrise and sunset, must be meant). Two indigenous modes are also mentioned. The one, which may, evidently answer, by the burning of bodies of determinate magnitude-analogous to our Alfred's candles; the other, by a peculiar sort of clock, described, not very intelligibly, to consist of a horizontal balance, having a weight at either end, and moving backwards and forwards upon a pin. The subject of hours and clocks may be concluded with the description of a clock-not its mechanism, unluckily-ordered in 1826 by the governor of Nagasaki as a pre- sent for the siogoun, and considered as a master-piece of mechanical genius. As such it was proudly exhibited to the Dutch factory, and certainly indicates more skill than taste.
"The † clock is contained in a frame three feet high by five feet long, and pre- sents a fair landscape at noontide. Plum and cherry trees in full blossom, with other plants, adorn the foreground, The background consists of a hill, from which falls a cascade, skillfully imitated in glass, that forms a softly flowing river, first winding around rocks placed here and there, then running across the middle of the landscape, till lost in a wood of fir-trees. A golden sun hangs aloft in the sky, and, turning upon a pivot, indicates the striking of the hours. On the frame below, the twelve hours of day and night are marked, where a slowly.creeping tortoise serves as a hand. A bird, perched upon the branch of a plum-tree, by its song and the clapping of its wings, announces the moment when an hour expires, and as the song ceases, a bell is heard to strike the hour; during which operation, a mouse comes out of a grotto and runs over the hill.
Every separate part was nicely executed; but the bird was too large for the tree, and the sun for the sky, while the mouse scaled the mountain in a moment of time."
The Japanese possess some little knowledge of mathematics, mechanics, tri- gonometry, and civil engineering; they have canals, intended chiefly for irriga. tion, and a great variety of bridges; they have learned to measure the height of mountains by the barometer, and have latterly constructed very good maps of the Japanese empire. In mechanics, they have not got much beyond lathes and water-mills, nor do they desire to make further progress. The views entertained upon this subject were explicitly announced, upon occasion of the model of an oil-mill, forming part of the Dutch present one year, offered to the siogoun. The ingenuity of the invention and its admirable mechanism were highly commended, but the model was returned, because the adoption of such an aid to labor would throw out of work all those Japanese who earn their bread in the ordinary mode of making oil.
* Fischer.
+ Meylan.