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=                          Edward_S._Morse                           =
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                            Introduction
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Edward Sylvester Morse (June 18, 1838 – December 20, 1925) was an
American zoologist, archaeologist, and orientalist.  He is considered
the "Father of Japanese archaeology."


                             Early life
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Morse was born in Portland, Maine to Jonathan Kimball Morse and Jane
Seymour (Becket) Morse. His father was a Congregationalist deacon who
held strict Calvinist beliefs. His mother, who did not share her
husband's religious beliefs, encouraged her son's interest in the
sciences. An unruly student, Morse was expelled from all but one of
the schools he attended in his youth -- the Portland village school,
the academy at Conway, New Hampshire, in 1851, and Bridgton Academy in
1854 (for carving on desks). He also attended Gould Academy in Bethel,
Maine.  At Gould Academy, Morse came under the influence of Dr.
Nathaniel True who encouraged Morse to pursue his interest in the
study of nature.

He preferred to explore the Atlantic coast in search of shells and
snails, or go to the field to study the fauna and flora. By the age of
thirteen he had put together an impressive collection of shells.
Despite his lack of formal education, his collections  soon earned him
the visit of eminent scientists from Boston, Washington and even the
United Kingdom. He was noted for his work with land snails, and
discovered two new species: 'Helix asteriscus', now known as
'Planogyra asteriscus', and 'H. Milium', now known as 'Striatura
milium'. These species were presented at meetings of the Boston
Society of Natural History in 1857 and 1859.

He was a gifted draughtsman, a skill that served him well throughout
his career. As a young man, it enabled him to be employed as a
mechanical draughtsman at the Portland Locomotive Company and later
preparing wood engravings for natural history publications. This
relatively well-paid work enabled him to save enough money to support
his further education. Morse was recommended by Philip Pearsall
Carpenter to Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) at the Museum of Comparative
Zoology at Harvard University for his intellectual qualities and
talent at drawing. After completing his studies he served as Agassiz's
assistant in charge of conservation, documentation and drawing
collections of mollusks and brachiopods until 1862. He became
especially interested in brachiopods during this time, and his first
paper on the topic was published in 1862.

During the American Civil War, Morse attempted to enlist in the 25th
Maine Infantry, but was turned down due to a chronic tonsil infection.
On June 18, 1863, Morse married Ellen (“Nellie”) Elizabeth Owen in
Portland.  The couple had two children, Edith Owen Morse and John
Gould Morse (named after Morse's lifelong friend Major John Mead
Gould).


                               Career
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Morse rapidly became successful in the field of zoology, specializing
in malacology or the study of molluscs.  In 1864, he published his
first work devoted to molluscs under the title 'Observations On The
Terrestrial Pulmonifera of Maine'. Morse had been elected to the
position of curator of the Portland Natural History Society, a
position he hoped would become permanent. But in 1866 the Great Fire
destroyed the buildings of the Society, along with much of Portland,
and also the chance of a salaried position. An alternative opportunity
arose with the foundation of the Peabody Academy of Science in Salem.
Morse returned to Massachusetts to work at the academy, along with
Caleb Cooke, Alpheus Hyatt, Alpheus Spring Packard and Frederic Ward
Putnam (director), all former students of Agassiz.

In 1867, along with Putnam, Hyatt and Packard, Morse co-founded the
scientific journal 'The American Naturalist', and Morse became one of
its editors. The establishment of the Journal was very important for
American Natural History. It was written by experts in the field, but
aimed to be accessible to a wide readership. This aim was greatly
helped by the high quality of the illustrations, many of them provided
by Morse himself. Morse's desire to bring natural history to a wider
audience also led him to give lectures to a variety of audiences. His
combination of broad knowledge, speaking skill, and ability to draw
quickly on the blackboard with both hands made him a popular
presenter.

Morse continued his work on brachiopods, often considered to be his
most important scientific work. In 1869, he was elected to the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Between 1869 and 1873 he
published a series of papers on the embryology and classification of
the group. Whereas in 1865 he had accepted the majority view that
placed brachiopoda within the molluscs, in 1870 largely on the basis
of embryological observations, he proposed that the brachiopoda should
be removed from the molluscs, and placed within the annelids, a group
of segmented worms. Modern taxonomy agrees with the first of these
propositions, but not the second, classifying molluscs, brachiopods
and annelids as three separate phyla within the superphylum
Lophotrochozoa. Helen Muir-Wood has given an account of the history of
the classification of the brachiopods that places Morse's work in its
historical context.


During this period the issue of evolution caused much discussion and
controversy. Agassiz was an opponent of evolution. He argued that the
persistence of animals such as 'Lingula' (a brachiopod) over immense
periods of time, from the Silurian to the present day, with little
change was "a fatal objection to the theory of gradual development".
However all of his students subsequently adopted evolutionary theory
in various forms. A clear statement of Morse's position on evolution
is found in his address, as vice-president (Natural History) of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science at its Buffalo NY
meeting in August 1876 (reprinted under the title of  'What American
Zoologists have done for Evolution') He adopts a clear selectionist
position, in contrast, for example, to Hyatt, who was a
neo-Lamarckian. He addresses the issue of human origins, and finds the
evidence for "the lowly origin of man", and common ancestry with apes,
convincing. He did not only express these views in a western context,
but was subsequently the first to bring Darwin's theory of evolution
to Japan.


Japan
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In June 1877 Morse first visited Japan in search of coastal
brachiopods. His visit turned into a three-year stay when he was
offered a post as the first professor of zoology at the Tokyo Imperial
University. He went on to recommend several fellow Americans as
'o-yatoi gaikokujin' (foreign advisors) to support the modernization
of Japan in the Meiji Era. To collect specimens, he established a
marine biological laboratory at Enoshima in Kanagawa Prefecture.

While looking out of a window on a train between Yokohama and Tokyo,
Morse discovered the Ōmori shell mound, the excavation of which opened
the study in archaeology and anthropology in Japan and shed much light
on the material culture of prehistoric Japan. He returned to Japan in
1882-3 to present a report of his findings to Tokyo Imperial
University.

Morse had much interest in Japanese ceramics, making a collection of
over 5,000 pieces of Japanese pottery. On his 1882-3 visit to Japan he
collected clay samples as well as finished ceramics. He devised the
term "cord-marked" for the sherds of Stone Age pottery, decorated by
impressing cords into the wet clay. The Japanese translation, "Jōmon,"
now gives its name to the whole Jōmon period as well as Jōmon pottery.
He brought back to Boston a collection amassed by government minister
and amateur art collector Ōkuma Shigenobu, who donated it to Morse in
recognition of his services to Japan. These now form part of the
"Morse Collection" of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. The catalogue
is a monumental work, and still the only major work of its kind in
English. His collection of daily artifacts of the Japanese people is
kept at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts. The
remainder of the collection was inherited by his granddaughter,
Catharine Robb Whyte via her mother Edith Morse Robb and is housed at
the Whyte Museum of the Canadian Rockies, Banff, Alberta, Canada.

He travelled several times to the Far East which inspired several
books, with his own illustrations. 'Japanese Homes and Their
Surroundings' was published in 1885; 'On the Older Forms of
Terra-cotta Roofing Tiles' in 1892; 'Latrines of the East' in 1893;
'Glimpses of China and Chinese Homes' in 1903; and 'Japan Day by Day'
in 1917.


Massachusetts
===============
After leaving Japan, Morse traveled to Southeast Asia and Europe. In
subsequent years, he returned to Europe, and Japan in quest of
pottery.

In 1886 Morse became president of the American Association for the
Advancement of Science. He became Keeper of Pottery at the Museum of
Fine Arts, Boston in 1890. He was also a director of the Peabody
Academy of Science (now part of and succeeded by the Peabody Essex
Museum) in Salem from 1880 to 1914. In 1898, he was awarded the Order
of the Rising Sun (3rd class) by the Japanese government. He was
elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1898. He
became chairman of the Boston Museum in 1914, and chairman of the
Peabody Museum in 1915. He was awarded the Order of the Sacred
Treasures (2nd class) by the Japanese government in 1922.

Morse was a friend of astronomer Percival Lowell, who inspired
interest in the planet Mars.  Morse would occasionally journey to the
Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Arizona, during optimal viewing times
to observe the planet.  In 1906, Morse published 'Mars and Its
Mystery' in defense of Lowell's controversial speculations regarding
the possibility of life on Mars.

He donated over 10,000 books from his personal collection to the Tokyo
Imperial University. On learning that the library of the Tokyo
Imperial University was reduced to ashes by the 1923 Great Kantō
earthquake, in his will he ordered that his entire remaining
collection of books be donated to Tokyo Imperial University.

Morse's last paper, on shell-mounds, was published in 1925. He died at
his home in Salem, Massachusetts in December of that year, of cerebral
hemorrhage. He was buried at the Harmony Grove Cemetery.


                            Morse's Law
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In 1872, Morse noticed that mammals and reptiles with reduced fingers
lose them from the sides in a particular order, beginning with the
thumb and then the little finger. Later researchers revealed that this
is a general pattern in tetrapods (except Theropoda and Urodela):
digits are reduced in the order I → V → II → III → IV, the reverse
order of their appearance in embryogenesis. This trend is known as
Morse's Law.


                          Published works
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* 1875. [https://archive.org/details/firstbookofzol1876mors 'First
Book of Zoölogy'] New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1, 3, and 5 Bond
Street. [https://archive.org/details/firstbookofzolb1875mors Second
Edition, 1886]
* 1885. [https://archive.org/details/japanesehomes00mors 'Japanese
Homes and Their Surroundings.'] New York: Harper & Brothers.
[http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/3050569  OCLC 3050569]
* 1892 [https://archive.org/details/morse-1892-bulletinofessexi-24esse
'On the Older Forms of Terra-cotta Roofing Tiles'] Bulletin of the
Essex Institute 24: 1-72
* 1893
[https://archive.org/details/morse-1893-american-architect-and-architecture
'Latrines of the East'] The American Architect and Building News 39:
170-174
* 1901. [https://archive.org/details/catalogueofmorse00bostrich
'Catalogue of the Morse collection of Japanese pottery']. Cambridge,
Printed at the Riverside Press.
* 1902. [https://archive.org/details/cu31924008631214  'Glimpses of
China and Chinese Homes.'] Boston: Little, Brown.
[http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/1116550  OCLC 1116550]
* 1917. 'Japan Day by Day, 1877, 1878-79, 1882-83.' Boston: Houghton
Mifflin Company. [http://www.worldcat.org/wcpa/oclc/412843  OCLC
412843]. [https://archive.org/details/japandaybyday18711917mors
'Volume I.']; [https://archive.org/details/japandaybyday18721917mors
'Volume II.']


                              See also
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* American Association of Museums
* Takamine Hideo
* Hiram M. Hiller, Jr.


                           External links
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* Museum of Fine Arts, Boston:
[https://web.archive.org/web/20060927104325/http://www.mfa.org/collections/sub.asp?key=22&subkey=116
"Japanese Ceramics from the Collection of Edward Sylvester Morse."]
* [http://www.yamasa.org/history/english/edward_morse.html Japanese
History Online]
*
*
*Whyte Museum


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