FORESTRY OF JAPAN. 87 



of trees in the nude forest lands varies according to local cir- 

 cumstances, but generally the prefectual government es- 

 tablishes the nursery beds and the seedlings, raised there, are 

 distributed among the people either free of charge or at a low 

 price. The planting of trees is encouraged by means of 

 allowing subsidies, and the experts are appointed as officials in 

 charge of these functions. 



In reference to the State forests, it may be noted that 

 since the opening of the exploitation work, the building of 

 forest has been effected from year to year, but in most cases, 

 the work consisted of the regeneration of the forests after the 

 trees felled, but nothing was done by way of improving the 

 nude forest lands. It was not until 1895 when an investigation 

 concerning the nude forest lands was completed that the plan 

 covering an extended period for the building up of forests in 

 these lands was drawn up. Since then, a fixed annual budget 

 was compiled whereby forests were formed upon the lands 

 covering no small extent. The work of the sylviculture in the 

 State forests made a fair progress subsequence to the opening 

 of the adjustment work of the second period in 1899, and 

 the whole attention was directed towards the improvements of 

 unwooded lands. The area of the state forests formed during 

 the space of 30 years from 1878 to 1897 is 43,149,90 c/10, 

 and the area of the forests that was built for the space of ten 

 years from 1808 to 1907 is 176,370 cko, of which the area 

 of natural growth was about 18,000 cho and that of trees 

 planted for sand protection was 2,897 c ^ i0 - The 80 percent of 

 the former was the regeneration in the cleared lands, and only 

 20 percent was the plantations of unwooded lands, and the 65 



