SOME JAPANESE AND NORTH AMERICAN TREES. 79 
is easy to raise from seed, grows faster when young than almost 
any tree I know except larch and Cupressus macrocarpa, grows 
in close canopy, and produces valuable and beautiful timber. 
It wants good soil, no doubt, shelter from dry, cold winds, and 
plenty of moisture during the growing-season; but though it 
has proved hardy in most parts of England, we have never, so 
far as I know, had seed from that part of Japan where the 
conditions are most like those of Great Britain, and from which 
I should expect the best results. 
Of the deciduous trees of Japan, the best for timber is Ze/kowa 
Keaki, which grows easily from seed in England, and seems very 
hardy ; but it does not ripen its wood when young, and it has 
a tendency to make many branches, a habit which, unless it be 
grown in close canopy in a plantation on deep, rich soil, will 
probably render it unsuitable for producing timber in this 
country. Cercidiphyllum japonicum, which grows to a great size 
in Hokkaido, and produces fine timber, Acanthopanax ricinifolium, 
and Magnolia hypoleuca are all perfectly hardy as regards winter 
cold; but the first is not hardy in spring, and the others, like 
most of the Japanese forest trees, require a warm and wet 
summer, and deeper, moister soil than they can have here. None 
of the Japanese oaks, of which there are many, as yet seem to be 
valuable as forest trees in Europe, and “sculus turbinata, though 
it is often very ornamental, is not equal in beauty to our horse- 
chestnut. Neither of the Japanese walnuts attains any great size 
even in Japan; and out of the long list of Japanese trees, nearly 
one hundred in all, which may prove hardy in England, not one 
seems likely to add to our somewhat scanty list of valuable timber- 
trees, except perhaps Betula Maximowiczii, the largest of all the 
birches, and a lime which is probably Z%/¢a cordata var. japonica. 
I have not alluded to the great variety of species which make 
the Japanese forests so interesting to a botanist: no other 
temperate country has so many growing together in the same 
forest. In the Kisogawa district of Central Japan I made, 
with the help of the local forester, a list of about eighty-five 
species, including twenty-five conifers, which are found growing 
spontaneously in an area of about 400,000 acres. It includes 
five pines, three or four silver firs, two or three spruces, hemlock, 
Thuya, Cupressus, Larix, yew, juniper, five birches, four alders, 
three hornbeams, five or six oaks, three or four maples, elm, 
lime, two magnolias, two chestnuts, poplar, two ash, and a number 
of genera unknown in Europe; but few, if any, of these trees 
