ady referred to. One has been printed (but not quite
in its genuine form, which decency was supposed to forbid) at the end of
Mr. Batchelor's grammar included in the same "Memoir." All the others
are now given to the world for the first time, never having yet appeared
in any language, not even in Japanese.

I would draw special attention to the character of the translation, as
being an absolutely literal one in the case of all those stories which I
originally wrote down in Aino from the dictation of native informants.
As time pressed, however, I sometimes had the story told me more
rapidly, and wrote it down afterwards in English only, but never more
than a few hours afterwards. In such cases, though every detail is
preserved, the rendering is of course not actually literal. This, and
the fact that there were several informants, will account for the
difference of style between the various stories. I have appended to each
story either the words "translated literally," or the words "written
down from memory," together with the date and the name of the informant,
in order that those who use the collection may know exactly what it is
that they are handling. In all such matters, absolute accuracy, absolute
literalness, wherever attainable, is surely the one thing necessary. Not
all the charm of diction, not all the ingenious theories in the world,
can for a moment be set in the balance against rigid exactness, even if
some of the concomitants of rigid exactness are such as to spoil the
subject for popular treatment. The truth, the stark naked truth, the
truth without so much as a loin-cloth on, should surely be the
investigator's sole aim when, having discovered a new set of facts, he
undertakes to present them to the consideration of the scientific world.

Of course Aino tales, like other tales, may also be treated from a
literary point of view. Some of the tales of the present collection,
prettily illustrated with pictures by Japanese artists, and altered,
expurgated, and arranged _virginibus puerisque_, are at the present
moment being prepared by Messrs. Ticknor & Co., of Boston, who thought
with me that such a venture might please our little ones both in England
and in the United States. But such things have no scientific value. They
are not meant to have any. They are mere juvenile literature, whose
English dressing-up has as little relation to the barbarous original as
the Paris fashions have to the anatomy of the huma