AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 93 



while among the sour red-berry species of any account, the cran- 

 berry (F. Vitis Idcea, L.), Jap. Koke-momo and Iwa-momo, and 

 the moss-berry ( F. oxycoccos, L.), Jap. Aka-momo and Iwa-haze 

 appear only sporadically, and seem confined chiefly to Yezo, so 

 that they do not attain to any great importance. 



37. EpigacB asiatica, Maxim. {Parapyrola tricJiocarpa, Miq.), 

 Jap. Iwa-nashi, i.e.^ rock-pear. To what extent its berry, vvhicli 

 reaches the thickness of a small cherry, is capable of being used 

 for food, I cannot judge. The plant, however, which till now has 

 been very little known, deserves closer attention, on account of its 

 beautiful evergreen leaves and its blossoms, which come out in 

 March and April. It is a small, evergreen, creeping shrub. I 

 found it in the woods about Kioto, and according to Keiske it oc- 

 curs also in Owari, and has been discovered, besides, in the north. 



{d) Nuts. 



38. Castanea vulgaris, Lamk. {Fagiis castanea, Thunb.), Jap. Kuri. 

 When one considers how quickly the chestnut becomes wild, even 

 in Germany, eg., in the Black Forest and along the Hardt in the 

 Palatinate, it is possible to grasp the difficulties attending any 

 attempt to determine the border-line between its range as a culti- 

 vated tree and as a spontaneous growth. Is it, for example, native 

 or gone wild in England, the Caucasus, Japan, and North America.? 

 Various reasons are in favour of the former supposition. Basing 

 his argument on them, de Candolle says in his book on " L'origine 

 des plantes cultives," already so often cited : " Le Chataignier, de 

 la famille des Cupuliferes, a une habitation naturelle assez etendue 

 mais disjointe," and very properly regards the differences between 

 the chestnut of the North American Atlantic forests, that native to 

 Japan, and that found in the western part of the Old World, as too 

 slight to justify a specific distinction. We therefore regard C. vesca, 

 L. as only the cultivated form of C. vulgaris, Lamk., which has 

 differentiated from it not only in Europe and Western Asia, but 

 also in Japan, independently. 



What Radde says about the occurrence of the chestnut in the 

 Caucasus, is of force also with regard to Japan. The tree seeks light 

 and shuns hot plains. It seldom exists in solid, homogeneous 

 masses, but appears in scattered groups, in sapling thickets and 

 brushwood. In Japan it forms thin groves, especially on mountain 

 slopes surrounding valleys, and adjacent to the higher-lying forest 

 of various kinds of trees. It attains there an altitude of more than 

 800 m. above sea-level. In June, when its whitish yellow catkins 

 are developed, these thin chestnut groves stand out everywhere 

 sharply from the surrounding woods, as one may see at Heidelberg 

 Castle. Chestnuts are not used as food to such an extent in Japan 

 as elsewhere, and are devoured mostly by wild swine. I found them 

 cultivated here and there in northern Hondo (once even in a village 

 as an umbrageous tree), but most frequently in Yonezawa, where, too, 

 that variety has been evolved which we call Marrons. This, as is 



