THE 
AMERICAN NATURALIST 
Vout. XXIX. December, 1895. 348 
SARGENT’S STUDIES OF THE FORESTS OF JAPAN. 
By CHARLES E. Bessey. 
Within a few years we have had a most valuable contribu- 
tion to our knowledge of the forest trees of Japan from the 
hand of Professor Charles S. Sargent, who first published a 
series of papers in Garden and Forest, now collected into a vol- 
ume entitled the “ Forest Flora of Japan.” Some of the re- 
sults of these studies are so at variance with the common state- 
ments in papers and books on the geographical distribution of 
plants as to be quite startling. Thus it is shown that many 
of the trees usually regarded as Japanese are not actually na- 
tives of the islands, but have been introduced from China and 
other adjacent regions. In discussing this point, reference is 
made to Dr. Gray’s paper on “ Forest Geography and Arche- 
ology,” in which it was shown that Japan is remarkable for 
the number of species of its forest trees (one hundred and 
sixty-eight). 
“In the Japanese enumeration were included, however, a 
number of trees which are not indigenous to Japan, but which, 
as we know, were long ago brought into the Empire from 
China and Corea, like most of the plants cultivated by the 
