74 FOBEST FLORA OF JAPAN. 



promises to live longer and attain a greater size. All the other Retinosporas of our gardens 

 are juvenile or monstrous forms of these two trees. Some of the dwarf forms are much culti- 

 vated in Japan especially as pot-plants, but they are not as popular there as I had been led 

 to expect, and are most often seen in the nursery-gardens of the treaty ports, where they are 

 collected to please the fancy of foreign purchasers. 



The most generally planted timber-tree of Japan is the Sugi, Cryptomeria Japonica, and its 

 wood is more universally used throughout the empire than that of any other Conifer. It is 

 one of the common trees of temple gardens and roadside plantations, and, when seen at its 

 best, as in the temple groves of Nikko or Nara, where it rises to the height of a hundred or a 

 hundred and twenty-five feet, with a tall shaft-like stem tapering abruptly from a broad base, 

 covered with bright cinnamon-red bark and crowned with a regular conical dark green head, 

 it is a beautiful and stately tree which has no rival except in the Sequoias of California. 

 Great planted forests of the Cryptomeria appear all over Hondo on broken foothills and 

 mountain-slopes up to elevations of nearly 3,000 feet above the sea, low valleys and good 

 soil being usually selected for such plantations, as the trees need protection from high winds. 

 The plantations decrease in size and luxuriance in northern Hondo, and the cultivation of the 

 Sugi does not appear to be attempted north of Hakodate, where there is a grove of small 

 trees on the slope of the hill above the town. The wood is coarse-grained, with thick layers 

 of annual growth, dark reddish heartwood, and thick pale sapwood; it is easily worked, 

 strong and durable, and is employed in aU sorts of construction. The bark, which is carefuly 

 stripped from the trees when they are cut down, is an important article of commerce, and is 

 used to cover the roofs of houses. A large round bunch of branchlets covered with their 

 leaves hung over the door of a shop is the familiar sign of the dealer in sake. 



Japan owes much of the beauty of its groves and gardens to the Cryptomeria. Nowhere 

 is there a more solemn and impressive group of trees than that which surrounds the temples 

 and tombs at Nikko, and the long avenue of this tree, under which the descendants of 

 leyasu traveled from the capital of the Shoguns to do honor to the burial-place of the 

 founder of the Tokugawa dynasty, has not its equal in stately grandeur. This avenue, if the 

 story told of its origin is true, can teach a useful lesson, and carries hope to the heart of the 

 planter of trees, who will see in it a monument more lasting than those which men sometimes 

 erect in stone or bronze in the effort to perpetuate the memory of their greatness. When the 

 body of leyasu was laid in its last resting-place on the Nikko hills, his successor in the Shogun- 

 ate called upon the Daimyos of the empire to send each a stone or a bronze lantern to deco- 

 rate the grounds about the mortuary temples. All complied with the order but one man, 

 who, too poor to send a lantern, offered instead to plant trees beside the road, that visitors to 

 the tomb might be protected from the heat of the sun. The offer was fortunately accepted, 

 and so well was the work done that the poor man's offering surpasses in value a thousand-fold 

 those of all his less fortunate contemporaries. 



Something of the stateliness of this avenue appears in our illustration (Plate xxiv.) 

 although, without the aid of colors, it is impossible to give an idea of the beauty of the Cryp- 

 tomeria. The planted avenue extends practically all the way from Tokyo to Nikko, but it 

 is only when the road reaches the foothills that it passes between rows of Cryptomerias, the 



