86 FORESTRY OF JAPAN. 



to plant trees in the nude lands owned by the State. In 

 these various ways, efforts were made towards the restoration 

 of the forests, but the result not having reached the expected 

 degree was limited to the plantation of trees in the land, 

 covering about 80,000 cho. Of the forests owned by the 

 people, there had already been started an intensive work of 

 forestry in districts such as Yoshino (Yamato), Muro (Kii) 

 Tama and Iruma (Musashi) and Katsuno (Yamashiro), while 

 there was made a progress in the sylviculture worthy of 

 notice, but in the rest of the forests, the work was crude and 

 the forest was left to the natural process of regeneration. In 

 forests owned by the public bodies, the vast area were mostly 

 given up to the collection of the grass. In 1890, when the 

 system of municipal government was carried into effect, these 

 forests were one after another selected as the basic funds of 

 these self-governing public bodies or as the common property 

 of public corporation. In these ways, a greater attention came 

 to be paid to the reforestation of the nude lands owned by the 

 people. Since the Forest Law was brought into operation in 

 1897, the local prefectural government by granting subsidies 

 from local funds proposed the reforestation of the nude lands 

 and encouraged aforestation of deserted and ruined forest lands. 

 Under supervision of the Government, the planting of trees has 

 become prosperous. The area of forests planted by the people 

 for the last three years from 1905 to 1907 is 249,563 cho. 

 The number of seedlings distributed, reached 1,125,369,851. 

 The area of forests reproduced by means of the natural 

 regeneration is 138,095 cho. 



The method adopted by way of encouragement for planting 



