GROWTH OF SCIADOPITYS VERTICILLATA 225 



and requiring a continuous moisture at the roots. 

 Experience here endorses that, and a tree grown 

 under these conditions in nine years has grown from 

 a height of 3 ft. to a height of 12 ft., and at an altitude 

 of 800 ft. But this, from all we can learn, is a growth 

 of rather remarkable exception. 



The Sciadopitys is one of those exceptional trees 

 that seems to brighten up and improve all round 

 after a sentence of transportation. Like a prophet 

 that has no honour in his own country, it seems to be 

 treated in its native land as a negligible quantity, 

 while in our lands it is feted as a distinguished stranger 

 of uncommon habits and agreeable appearance. 

 Wherever it arrives it is tended with care and pam- 

 pered unsparingly. As in the story of the well-fed 

 house-dog in ^sop's Fables, the same animal, when 

 let loose to fend for himself, presented a very different 

 side of character, both in disposition and appearance. 

 In Japan, from the evidences of those who have 

 undertaken special expeditions to make its nearer 

 acquaintance, it presents the appearance of an elon- 

 gated maypole skimpily clad and scantily capped. 

 Here, on the other hand — say, after at most only a 

 sojourn of fifty years with us, where it has re- 

 ceived the minute attentions of a lapdog solicitude, — 

 it exhibits a condition of a well-nourished, branched- 

 from-top-to-toe apparition. 



How much the dunce that's sent to roam 

 Excels the dunce that stays at home, 



might a native of Hondo make remark and paraphrase 

 upon if he chanced on one of our cherished specimens 

 in an English garden I We can only add that, if the 

 Japs do not rate them highly, we do, and from a 

 lawn-scape or arboretum point of view they are 

 much appreciated by many of us. 



