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 In 1872, Morse noticed that mammals and reptiles with reduced fingers lose them beginning from the sides: thumb the first and little finger the second. 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 1875. First Book of Zoölogy New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1, 3, and 5 Bond Street. Second Edition, 1886 1885. Japanese Homes and Their Surroundings. New York: Harper & Brothers. OCLC 3050569 1892 On the Older Forms of Terra-cotta Roofing Tiles Bulletin of the Essex Institute 24: 1-72 1893 Latrines of the East The American Architect and Building News 39: 170-174 1901. Catalogue of the Morse collection of Japanese pottery. Cambridge, Printed at the Riverside Press. 1902. Glimpses of China and Chinese Homes. Boston: Little, Brown. OCLC 1116550 1917. Japan Day by Day, 1877, 1878-79, 1882-83. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company. OCLC 412843. Volume I.; Volume II. See also American Association of Museums Takamine Hideo Hiram M. Hiller, Jr. References Further reading Benfey, Christopher (2003). The Great Wave: Gilded Age Misfits, Japanese Eccentrics, and the Opening of Old Japan, New York: Random House. ; OCLC 50511058 Rosenstone, Robert A. (1988). Mirror in the Shrine: American Encounters with Meiji Japan. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. ; OCLC 17108604 Wayman, Dorothy Godfrey. (1942) Edward Sylvester Morse: A Biography. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. OCLC 757515 2018. From Morse to Whyte: A Dynastic Bequest