Cryptomeria 137 



quality, but about 80 yen per 100 cubic feet, equal to about is. 8d. per foot, is the 

 price in Tokyo, and selected half-inch boards for ceilings and panellings cost from 2S. 

 to 4s. each. 



Rein, in Industries of Japan, p. 226, speaks of a Cryptomeria which he measured 

 in 1874 having at i^ metres high a girth of 9.41 metres, equal to about 30 feet. 

 This grew on the Sasa-no-yama-toge, between Tokyo and Kofu, at about 750 metres 

 above s ^a level. 



Weston, in The Alps of Japan, mentions trees high up on the eastern side 

 of the pass between Nakatsugawa and the Ina-kaido, called the Misaka-toge, 

 on the northern slope of Ena-San, which measured at 3 feet from the ground no 

 less than 26 feet in girth. It would not be supposed possible that in a country 

 where neither machinery nor horse -power is used for the removal of timber such 

 large trees could be utilised, but the Japanese are very ingenious in the handling 

 of large logs in their mountain forests. 



I was presented by Baron Kiyoura, Minister of Agriculture, with a most curious 

 and interesting series of sketches, which I found in the Imperial Bureau of Forestry, 

 showing the means adopted for felling and transporting large timber growing in 

 rocky gorges and the most inaccessible situations. These I exhibited at a meeting 

 of the Scottish Arboricultural Society at Edinburgh on loth February 1905. 



The modus operandi is as follows : First men climb up the trees and lop off 

 all the large branches, so that the tree may not lodge among its standing neighbours 

 when felled. Ropes are then attached to the trunk and carried round a windlass, so 

 that it may be pulled over in the right direction. 



When the tree is felled it is cut into suitable lengths, often 20 to 30 feet long, 

 and a hole cut in the end, to which a stout rope is attached. By this it is some- 

 times dragged, sometimes lowered, to the nearest slide, which is built up of smaller 

 timber. Or, if the locality is too distant from a slide or from a stream large enough 

 to float it, a platform is built on the mountain-side, on which it is sawn into boards, 

 which are carried out of the forest on men's backs, or on sledges on the snow. 



A most ingenious plan, which I have seen in no other country, is adopted where 

 the slope of the mountain is too steep to let a log slide at its own pace. 



The slide is built in a zig-zag form, and at each angle a bank is made and 

 covered with earth and bark to check the impetus of the log, whose upper end 

 when so checked is reversed by means of a strong pole laid across the slide, and 

 then goes downwards till it reaches the next angle, where it is again checked and 

 reversed by its own weight. 



To see a large gang of men, all singing in chorus at their work, moving timber 

 in a mountain forest under the direction of their foremen, is one of the most 

 interesting sights \ beheld in Japan, and I could not sufficiently admire the pluck, 

 activity, and ingenuity they showed in the very dangerous and difficult work which 

 is necessary when logs get jammed, as they often do in these rapid mountain 

 torrents ; and when men, standing on small rafts fastened to boulders in a roaring 

 rapid, or let down from above by ropes, have to dislodge the logs from where they 

 have stuck fast. 



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