AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 263 



is one of those countries where Nature wears her most variegated 

 and attractive dress. Later on, son>e of those ornamental plants 

 which Japan had got from China were introduced into our gardens 

 and hothouses, and were taken for indigenous, just as certain Chinese 

 ornamental plants brought to Calcutta, and afterward to Europe, 

 were supposed to be of Indian origin, and were named accord- 

 ingly ; e.g. Rosa indica, L., and CJirysantheimnn indiaim, L. 



As the feudal system developed in Japan and, under the rule 

 of the Tokugawa, the privileged classes enjoyed their prerogatives 

 in peace, the parks surrounding the fortresses of the Daimios and 

 their Yashikis in Yeddo became the gathering place of various 

 ornamental plants which had been introduced gradually from the 

 neighbouring continent, and principally of those which had been 

 borrowed from the splendid indigenous flora.^ Every Samurai 

 cultivated as large a selection as space would permit in the little 

 garden which was his pleasure-ground, but the nationality of the 

 plants after so many digressions was unrecognisable. 



The Japanese ornamental garden is not intended to be an abode, 

 but merely to please the eye. It is not a pleasure-garden ox Jar din 

 d'agranent, in the German or French sense, but it has its own 

 peculiar charm. The cosy arbour which is hardly ever wanting 

 in the most modest German house garden, in whose shade from 

 childhood we pass so many happy hours of recreation and 

 agreeable work, is not to be found in the Niwa.^ There is also 

 no fine, carefully kept sward, with flower-beds here and there, 

 and broad gravel walks. But there is often a great deal of taste 

 and refinement manifested in imitating nature and constructing a 

 miniature landscape. If the limited space will not permit a little 

 pond in which gold fish and turtles may comfortably play and 

 lotus flowers unfold their lovely leaves and petals in midsummer, 

 there is nevertheless room for a modest water-basin, with small 

 red-bellied Imori {Triton subcristatiis) in its clear bottom, for a 

 small arched bridge over the little stream flowing from it, and a 

 pile of rocks. On a somewhat larger plan, this becomes a beautiful 

 cool place where clear rippling water flows from a little mossy 

 grotto, whose arches are built up in close imitation of mountain 

 rocks. These are covered with ferns and little bushes of Tsutsuji 

 {Azalea indica, L.), resembling our Alpine roses, being clothed in 

 early summer with red blossoms ; and further, with the beautiful 

 Daimiojiso {Saxifraga corticscefolia, S. and Z.), and other tastefully 



^ Most of these very interesting large parks, with their grand old tree-groups 

 and tasteful landscapes of rock and water, avenues and lodges, their many sorts 

 of fanciful gardening, pruning, dwarfing, and deforming, stone turrets and 

 idols, were destroyed after the Restoration. The finest specimen of Japanese 

 landscape gardening now to be seen is at Fuki-age, the Imperial Garden in 

 Tokio. 



2 The Glycine ( Wistaria chinensis) is cultivated here and there on trellises, 

 but not in order to afford shade, only to better exhibit the hanging clusters of 

 blossoms. (See Illustration in vol. i.) 



