TREES AND FLOWERING PLANTS. 109 



build temples and shrines upon elevated sites in the vicinity 

 of towns and cities, and to visit them frequently for worship 

 and pleasure. These high places are usually approached by 

 well-constructed roads and walks, and massive stairways of 

 cut stone, and surrounded by magnificent groves of gigantic 

 evergreen trees, which have been carefully protected for 

 centuries. Camellias, azaleas, double-flowering apples aiid 

 cherries, and other ornamental trees, shrubs, and herbaceous 

 plants, in great variety, are also freely used for adornment. 

 The people appreciate and enjoy these things of beauty, and 

 cheerfully contribute to the maintenance of the priests who 

 care for them ; and, as a matter of course, they never steal 

 nor injure them. 



In propagating plants, both from seed and by extension, 

 the Japanese are exceedingly skilful ; and they also cultivate 

 and transplant trees with great success. They are very fond 

 of oddities which it requires great time and care to produce ; 

 such as old, dwarf trees grown in minute pots, small trees 

 standing on three or four long slender roots resembling 

 spider-legs, and trees trained into the form of miniature 

 houses, boMs, or animals. They delight in coaxing a single 

 branch of a pine to extend itself a long distance from the 

 trunk in a horizontal direction, so as to look as artificial as 

 possible. It is also common to bring all the main branches 

 of a pine into a horizontal position, either on the ground, or 

 at about six feet from it, and carefully bind them to poles of 

 bamboo ; by which treatment the tree, after many years, 

 comes to resemble a gigantic toadstool. On the shore of 

 Lake Biwa stands a red pine which can be hardly less than 

 three hundred years old ; and the immense branches are sup- 

 ported on posts, and extend so as to cover a circular area 

 some three hundred feet in diameter, while the height of the 

 centre may not exceed fifty feet. 



In the cultivation of rice, the seed is sown thickly in well- 

 prepared beds under water, and when about six inches high, 

 in early summer, it is transplanted by hand, in small clumps 

 eight inches apart, into the muddy fields. At this season 

 men and women may be seen wading up to their knees in 

 the flooded plats which have been carefully manured with 

 some green crop turned under by means of plough or spade, 

 or with grass and herbage gathered for the purpose in the 



