Aprii.i9i7.] b. HA TATA.— SOME CONIFERS FROM TONKIN & YUNNAN. 1 15 



appear in my translation). The original is also very accurate; 

 it is not at all a poetical fantasy, as is usually the case with 

 Chinese poems. No doubt, it must have been done from the 

 poet's sketches of nature made on the spot. This at once 

 caught the attention of Prof. Kawai. He thought there must 

 exist such a forest in or near China, and began to consider 

 what kind of trees it would be composed of. Then he traced 

 the description in the poem and came to the stanza "some that 

 had died from very age, remained up-right as they were, turned 

 to white skeletons, and stood side by side like an army of 

 ghosts without mark of ruin or injury." This, he thought, 

 could never be the case with tropical arborvitae, nor was it 

 like any deciduous forest. Broad leaved trees, when they die, 

 fall and their trunks are covered with mosses or mould. But 

 the words " turned to white skeletons and stood side by side 

 like an army of ghosts," must surely describe a forest of certain 

 kinds of Conifers, and very probably, judging from the geogra- 

 phical proximity to Formosa, a forest of some Cupressus-kinds, 

 of which the latter island is proud to have wonderfully large 

 trees on Mt. Arisan. This was the conclusion to which Prof. 

 Kawai came at last, after deliberate consideration. He then 

 proceeded to ascertain where the poet could have met with 

 such a beautiful forest, and finally got an idea of a place where 

 the latter would most probably have made the nature-sketches 

 for his poem. This, Dr. Kawai argued, would most likely have 

 been the mountainous region on the boundaries of Yunnan and 

 Tonkin. 



Accordingly, towards the close of last }'ear, he started for 

 the place and at last succeeded in finding an immense forest of 

 Conifers of the Cupressus group, (principally of Fokicnia Kawaii 

 IIav.) just as he had expected. The following novelties are 

 the results of my studies on the collections brought back by 

 Professor Kawai. 



Juniperus Linn. 



funipcrus chinensis Linn. jft. f^ \(\ 



Bab. rfope arbetn Yunnan, leg. Sh. Kawai, Jan. I'.MT. 



Probably it i^ planted. 



