144 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



representative of the evergreen genus Cmnamomiun of the laurel 

 family. All species of Cmnainomiun are marked by their odour of 

 volatile oils, which are developed in various parts of the tree, and 

 also by their leaves, which are long-stemmed, quickly warping, 

 even-edged, leathery, and of a bright dark-green colour. In most 

 cases they are placed alternately, and are further distinguished by 

 a characteristic three-branched veining. The change of leaf takes 

 place, as with most evergreens, in April, when the young, delicate, 

 yellowish-green foliage displaces the dark-green leaves after the 

 latter have lost their brightness. The young branches of the 

 Kusunoki break off easily, and after every heavy wind a large 

 number of them are found on the ground. Hence the camphor- 

 tree rarely develops a symmetrically full crown. But what it thus 

 loses in beauty is made up by its mighty form. Apart from 

 the difference of foliage, and in the production of blossom and 

 fruit, an old camphor-tree resembles nothing so much as a stately 

 oak, in its thickness of trunk, the want of symmetry in its crown, 

 its mighty gnarled and twisted boughs, and its rough, torn bark. 

 This is especially true of the specimens, sometimes very old, found 

 near the temples and in the old parks of the southern castle-cities. 

 Fortune says that he never saw such large old camphor-trees in 

 China as at the old temples in Nagasaki.^ But surprisingly large 

 specimens occur also in other and more northerly parts of Japan. 

 Thus in the spring of 1875, in the province of Kii, on the road 

 from Wakayama to the celebrated cloister-town Koyasan (about 

 344° N. lat. and 135° 20' E. long. Gr.), I saw such a tree at Kaseda- 

 mura, with a trunk circumference of 11*5 m. At a height of i4 m. 

 the giant divided into a number of mighty, wide-branching boughs. 

 In the northern part of Tokio, in the park of Uyeno, there is a tree 

 near the temple of Gongen-sama, the lofty trunk of which at breast 

 high had in 1874 a circumference of 5*88 m., and at a height of 

 40 to 50 m. still partially overshadowed with its thick boughs the 

 slender coniferous trees around it (Cryptomeria and firs). Another 

 large specimen is to be seen in Hon-j6, on the left side of the 

 Sumida-gawa. Here, in the capital, these trees have to endure a 

 winter of seventy to eighty nights of frost, in which the tempera- 

 ture sometimes sinks to —7° C, and in exceptional cases even to 

 -9°C. 



In Northern Italy, too, e.g., on Lake Maggiore, the camphor- 

 laurel endured, in December, 1879, a cold of —9° C. But it seems 

 to have reached at this point the lower temperature-limit within 

 which it occurs in the open air, for I did not find it north of the 

 thirty-sixth parallel, even on the flat, mild coast of the Pacific. In 

 the rough highlands of the interior it nowhere occurs, even more to 

 the southward. 



^ ^ Kaempfer saw in Kiushiu, in 1691, a camphor-tree which was noted for its 

 size. In 1826 von Siebold found it stiil growing and thickly leaved. Its hollow 

 trunk was then i6"884 m. in girth. 



