226 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



in circumference. The plants in their wild condition reach the same 

 height but not the same thickness of trunk. A magnificent speci- 

 men in the court of the temple at Yutenji near Tokio, with straight 

 trunk and beautifully formed crown, I estimated in 1874, by its 

 shadow, at 5 meters high. The trunk had a circumference of i'47 

 meters. In 1844, Lehmann found the latter i'53 metres and the 

 height 5'5 meters. The age of the tree was given him as 120 years. 



4. Shii-no-ki {Quercus ciispidata). A specimen behind the Sanno 

 temple was, in 1874, 4*6 meters in circumference but scarcely 12 

 meters high, although this species is reckoned among the tallest 

 oaks of Japan. 



5. Fuji ( Wistaria Chiiiensis, S. and Z.). There was a giant tree 

 at Nakanobu-mura near Tokio, which covered the spacious court- 

 yard of a tea-house, and bore thousands of long soft clusters ot 

 blossoms, but it has disappeared. Below its branching and at 

 breast high it measured, in the spring of 1874, 2*45 meters around 

 the trunk. 



6. Sugi {Cryptomeria japonica, Don.). On Sasa-no-yama-toge, on 

 Koshiukaido (road from Tokio to Kofu), about 750 meters above 

 sea level, I found in the autumn of 1874, on the right of the road, 

 a Cryptomeria, which at i J meters high had a circumference of 

 9'4i meters. Specimens of from 6 to 7 meters circumference are 

 frequent in Nikko and other temple groves. They reach a height of 

 30 to 45 meters. In 1 565 the missionary Almeyda visited the temple 

 of Kasuga near Nara. The way led through an avenue of cedars 

 (Sugi) and pines " qui faisoient une fort belle symetrie, et dont les 

 tetes se joignoient tellement que le soleil n'y pouver percer." 

 Single cedars measured "cinq brasses de circumference," or 8*12 

 meters according to modern measurement. He found the roof of 

 the temple resting on ninety columns of cedar (Cryptomeria) trunks, 

 each of which measured 6 meters in circumference.' 



7. Ichio or Ginkiyo {Ginkgo biloba, L.). Among the trees of 

 this kind in temple grounds in and around Tokio, the largest 

 and most finely developed is the one at the temple Koyenji. Ten 

 years ago, at 2 meters high, its circumference was 7-3 meters, and 

 in 1884 nearly 7*55 meters. Lehmann estimated the height of the 

 stoutest branches at 32 meters, and heard that the age of the tree 

 was supposed to be 1,000 years. This must, however, be a great 

 exaggeration in view of the origin and growth of the city Yedo 

 under Tokugawa lyegasu, and the circumstance that the Salisburia 

 only grows from planting. The tree has otherwise the appearance 



^ John Booth of Klein Flottbeck near Altona, mentions in his interesting 

 report of the Forestry Exhibition in Edinburgh, 1884, that in the Japanese Re- 

 ports concerning the province of Kiushia (where ?), it was stated that there 

 were Cryptomeria groves in which single trees had a diameter of 27 feet. I 

 should have at once substituted circumference for diameter had not the farther 

 statement been made that they (Morimasa Takei and his companions), to the 

 number of twelve, once passed the night in a hollow trunk. 



