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 died in 1621 after having lived 21 years in this country got an appointment as ship-builder and gunnery-instructor from the Shôgun’s Government. Later on, (from 1643-50) a Dutchman, W. Byleveld by name, and three Dutch marines (A. P. Spelt, H. Van Elsfort and J. Scholten) lived in Yedo, and instructed the Japanese in the manufacture and manipulation of guns, muskets and gunpowder. The following table gives the result of our analyses of four different gun-bronzes. These old guns were admirably cast, and shew the cleverness of the Japanese in being able to found such large pieces of metal without the aid of western machinery.

Most of the large bronze guns which were placed in former times on the fortifications of many harbours in order to keep away the feared foreigners, have now been removed and sold as old bronze to European merchants, so that this metal will now very likely have been metamorphosed into different kinds of western machinery and steam-engines. New European steel-made guns have taken the place of the large bronze guns in Japan.

The constitution of old bronze guns cast in Japan after the year 1600 is as follows.

The amount of iron is very probably due to impure copper. Lead and zine are perhaps added purposely, although it is possible that the tin used for smelting, contained these metals, as Chinese tin is often impure.

The Japanese bronze does not differ much from the old European bronze, as can be seen by the following table,