INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY EXHIBITION. 75 
cataloguing the collection were admirable. Extending, as it does, 
over 15 degrees of latitude, the ‘Island Empire” of Japan possesses 
a Flora common to both tropical and temperate zones, The rural 
arts have long had their home there, and none have attained to 
more perfection in the grafting and dwarfing of trees and shrubs 
than the Japanese. Scientific forestry has now been regarded 
as of suflicient importance to be taken in hand by the State, and 
four years ago a School of Forestry was established, in which in- 
struction is given to pupils by Japanese officials who have studied 
in the forestry schools of Germany. The curriculum in the 
forestry school includes botany, chemistry of the soil, natural 
philosophy, land surveying, and the practical work of planting 
and rearing trees. Attending the forestry school are about 150 
pupils fitting themselves for work in the Government forests, 
while other pupils are the sons of landowners and farmers acquir- 
ing a scientific knowledge of arboriculture, in order to qualify 
them for managing their own lands. Japan, it will thus be 
seen, is ahead of Britain in this matter; and when the British 
Forest School is established, it will be well for it, and for the 
country, if it can draw its pupils from the same classes as attend 
for instruction in Japan. The Government forests of the “Island 
Empire” are now under strict regulations, and are worked on a 
systematic principle; plantations have been formed both for the 
rearing of native and foreign trees; and the charts which were 
so profusely hung around the walls of the court showed how 
carefully the forest surveys were being made. One of the charts 
by a native arboriculturist, showed the empire mapped out into 
five different tree regions—the first consisting of the zone of 
high temperature, with tropical evergreen trees, of which Ficus 
Wightiana was given as the typical example. In the temperate 
parts were the oaks and beeches and cedars, and the whole tribe 
of Thuias and Retinosporas, for which Japan is so famous ; while 
in the upper regions, as at home, is the habitat of the pines and 
firs—the handsome Abies Veitchii being the representative of the 
mountain trees. The walls were also covered with photographs 
and pictures of forest scenes, illustrative of the manner in which 
trees are cut and transported from the higher to the lower 
regions, while on the tables were numerous and most ingenious 
models of contrivances for causing artificial floods on small rivers 
for the transport of timber, and of shoots—“ Sadies ”—for sending 
the timber down steep and rugged mountain sides. In the 
