THE CONIFERS. 75 



lower part being planted, as is the case with the other great highways of Japan, with Pine- 

 trees ; nor is this avenue continuous, as has often been stated, for whenever a village occurs 

 or one of the roadside tea-houses, which are scattered all along the road, there is a break in 

 the rows of trees, and it is only in some particular spots that a long view of continuous trees is 

 obtained. The railroad, which follows parallel and close to the avenue for a considerable dis- 

 tance and then crosses it just before the Nikko station is reached, is a serious injury to it. 

 The trees, as will be seen in the illustration, are planted on high banks made by throwing up 

 the surface-soil from the roadway ; they are usually planted in double rows, and often so close 

 together that sometimes two or three trees have become united by a process of natural graft- 

 ing. Young trees are constantly put in to fill gaps, and every care apparently is taken 

 to preserve and protect the avenue. How many of the trees originally planted when the 

 road was first laid out in the beginning of the seventeenth century are left it is impossible 

 to say, but I suspect that most of those now standing are of much later date. One of the 

 trees close to the upper end of the road which had been injured by fire was cut down during 

 our visit to Nikkd. The stump, breast-high above the ground, measured four feet across inside 

 the bark, and showed only one hundred and five layers of annual growth. Few of the trees 

 in the avenue were much larger than this, although in the neighborhood of the temples there 

 are a few which girt over twenty feet ; these were probably planted when the grounds were 

 first laid out. 



The two, Chaimecyparis and the Cryptomeria, the most valuable timber-trees in Japan, are 

 now almost unknown in a wild state. They may, perhaps, be found growing naturally on 

 some of the southern mountains which we did not visit ; but wherever we went, we saw only 

 trees that had been planted by man, although some of the plantations had evidently lived 

 through several centuries. 



Cephalotaxns drnpacea is the only Japanese member and the type of a genus of half a 

 dozen species distributed from Japan, through China to northern India. It is widely and quite 

 generally scattered through the mountain regions of the empire, extending north to central 

 Yezo, where it appears on the low hills as an under-shrub only two or three feet high, while 

 on the Hakone Mountains, in Hondo, it occasionally grows into a bushy tree twenty or twenty- 

 five feet in height. Cephalotaxus drnpacea is now common in our gardens, although it is not 

 very hardy or satisfactory here in New England, where it often suffers in winter, missing, 

 no doubt, the thick and continuous covering of snow which protects it in Yezo. Like its 

 relative, the Gingko, the same individual does not produce male and female flowers, and 

 the fruit, like that of the Gingko, is an almond-like nut inclosed in a fleshy covering. A res- 

 inous oil, used in lamps, is pressed from the seeds, and the wood is occasionally employed in 

 cabinet-making. 



The Gingko, although we are in the habit of associating it with Japan, is in reality not a 

 native of that country, into which it was brought with their religion by the Buddhist priests. 

 It is still unknown in a wild state, and it is possible that this genus, which was widely distrib- 

 uted with many species through the temperate and colder parts of the northern hemisphere in 

 tertiary times, has become exterminated from its native forests, and has only been preserved 

 through the agency of the priests of Buddha, who seem to hold it in particular respect. The 



