AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 



237 



The Japanese, like the Chinese, to whom the monoecious charac- 

 ter of this tree has long been known, describe the Kuro-matsu as 

 male, and the Aka-matsu as female. Accordingly they call them 

 0-matsu (male pines) and Me-matsu (female pines). At the New 

 Year's festival it used to be the custom to place at the left of the 

 wreathed doorways a black-trunked P. Massoniana, and at the 

 right a red-trunked P, densiflora^ to represent a happy marriage. 



Piniis Massoniana makes the least requirements as to soil of any 

 tree in Japan. If the sand dunes thrown up by the waves of the 

 sea have attained some firmness through the settlement of deeply 

 rooted strand plants, among which generally the creeping juniper, 

 Jiiniperus littoralis^ Maxim., is often found, the Japanese turn them 

 to good use by plantations of Kuro-matsu. This pine is therefore 

 of very much the same importance here as Pinus Pinaster in the 

 French Departement Des Landes, which has been previously men- 

 tioned. From the coast to 300 meters above the sea, we find the 

 Kuro-matsu on land that would afford no support to other conifers. 

 It comes to its best as a shade-tree on the country roads and in 

 temple court-yards. Trunks from 150 to 200 years old, with a 

 circumference of 4 to 6 m., and 30 to 35 m. high, are here not un- 

 frequently found. 



The appearance of Pinus densiflora resembles the foregoing 

 species in many particulars. It grows in hilly and mountain dis- 

 tricts 150 to 800 m. above the sea level, and in exceptional instances 

 still higher, especially on the sunny slope of a mountain. Lower 

 down, as on the roadways of the country, it is often found mingled 

 with Pinus Massoniana, and like it, in scattered growth, so that there 

 is plenty of light and air for many a shrub as underwood between 

 the trees. It also inhabits the gravel soil formed from the slate of 

 mountain sides, and granite splinters, old lava fields also, and does 

 not attain the dimensions of the Massoniana. 



Among all the conifers of Japan, the wood of these two, next to 

 that of some of the firs, is the cheapest. The two are very similar 

 in colour and marking, as well as in their long straight fibres, in 

 closeness and toughness. They are much employed therefore in 

 house and bridge building, for numerous little implements, and as 

 wood for burning porcelain, and many other purposes. But, in 

 comparison with the wood of our pines, they have no remarkable 

 superiority. They are just as resinous and knotty, and only 

 exceptionally as straight in trunk, being much more bent than our 

 Pinus sylvestris in thin and open groves. 



29, Pinus Kotaiensis, S. and Z. {P. Strobus, Thunb.), Jap. Chosen- 

 matsu (Korea pine), and Goyo-no-matsu (five-needle pine). The 

 name given by Thunberg to this variety indicates its simi- 

 larity in appearance to the North American white pine, while 

 its cones, with their edible nuts, remind us more of P, Ceinbra. 

 The tree had its origin, as is indicated b}^ one of its Japanese 

 names, in Corea, and is found in Japan only as an ornamental 



