386 The Trees of Great Britain and Ireland 



Where I first saw it, on a sandy plain above the Lake Chuzenji on the slopes of 

 the volcano of Nantai-san, the trees were of no great size, averaging perhaps 60 to 

 70 feet in height, with a girth rarely exceeding 6 feet in mature trees and more often 

 ' to 4 feet They were very similar in habit to the larch m the Alps, and had not 

 an excessive development of branches. Higher up above Yumoto in nch forest 

 soil thinly scattered among deciduous trees of many species, they were larger, some- 

 times attaining 80 feet high and 10 to 12 feet in girth; but I saw none anywhere 

 which rivalled our larch in height, and am inclined to think it is not nearly such 

 a long-lived tree, though, as I saw none felled, I was unable to count the rmgs. 

 Prof Sargent, who saw the tree in the same place as I did, came to a very similar 

 conclusion. Mayr states that he found it wild on the volcanoes of central Hondo, 

 Fuji, Ontake, Asama, Shiranesan, Norikura, and others, always growing near the 

 timber line, with Abies, Tsuga, and Picea hondoensis. 



The tree is valued for its timber, which is used for ship- and boat-building, and 

 has lately come into great demand for railway sleepers and telegraph poles. In 

 consequence of this it has been largely planted at elevations of 4000 to 5000 feet in 

 the central and northern provinces, and many plantations that I saw of ten to fifteen 

 years old were very similar to larch plantations in England in growth and habit. I 

 also saw it planted experimentally in Hokkaido, along the lines of railway, where it 

 seemed to grow as well in this rich black soil as in its native mountains. 



Cultivation 



In 1890 I sowed seeds from three different localities — Dunkeld, Hildenley, and 

 Tortworth— and raised plants from each of them, which grew better than seedlings 

 raised at the same time from Japanese seed; but this may have been partly due to 

 the fact that the latter were dressed with paraffin by my forester to protect them from 

 birds and mice in the seed-bed. At six years old these plants are now from four to 

 eight feet high, and though some of them have been more or less checked by severe 

 spring frosts, they are generally growing well. 



As a proof of the hardiness of the tree I may mention that the late Sir R. 

 Menzies showed me three young trees which he had planted, at an elevation of about 

 1250 feet, in the garden of the inn near the top of the pass between Glen Lyon and 

 Loch Rannoch ; and in some of his plantations on the north shore of Loch Rannoch 

 they were growing very vigorously in mixture with Douglas fir. 



No conifer of recent introduction has attracted so much attention among 

 foresters as the Japanese larch, which, during the last ten years, has been sown very 

 largely by nurserymen (Messrs. Dickson of Chester are said to have sold no less than 

 750,000 in the year 1905), and is looked upon by many foresters as likely to replace 

 the common larch, because it is, so far as we yet know, less liable to the attacks of 

 Peziza Willkommii. But this pest has already in more than one place been certainly 

 identified on the Japanese larch, and I have little doubt that as time goes on we 

 shall hear more of this. Henry visited in 1904 six plantations of Japanese larch of 

 ages from five to sixteen years, and in none could detect any sign of canker. There 



