FORESTRY BUREAU. 



171 



comfortable looking articles, and snow the natives to be possessed of considerable 

 constructive ingenuity, and, from the number of musical instruments shown, they 

 are not devoid of musical taste. Gums and bees'-wax are also products which might 

 be more developed as articles of commerce. 



JAPAN. 



The Island Empire of the " Rising Sun," which twenty years ago was all but closed 

 to strangers, is to-day one of the most active of the nations. To the exhibition the 

 Government of Japan seut as commissioner Mr. Morimass Takei, chief of the forestry 

 department in Tokio, and with him were two assistant commissioners. The area of 

 the Empire of Japan is about 96,000,000 acres. The forest area— exclusive of the Loo 

 Choo aud Bonin Islands— is about 29,000,000 acres. The forests are held in nearly 

 equal proportions by Government and by private owners. Forestry has long been 

 made a study in Japan, and, as is well known, no people are more skilled at graft- 

 ing and dwarfing trees than the Japanese. The Government forestry department 

 is now an important branch of the state. The head office is in the capital, Tokio, 

 but in each of the forty-four " ken," or states or counties, into which Japan is 

 divided, there is a branch office, from which the respective forests and plantations 

 are managed. During the days of the old rulers each lord had his own forestry laws, 

 all of which were very strict.* One of these made it a punishable offense to be found 

 in the forest after nightfall. Since the new regime of twenty years ago the forestry 

 laws have been consolidated and their old feudal strictness somewhat abated. The 

 laws are nevertheless still strict enough to secure the due conservation of the forests. 

 In Tokio there is a Government school of forestry, which was established three 

 years ago, and is now attended by 150 pupils. Some of these are preparing them- 

 selves for practical work in the Government forests; others are the sons of land-owners 

 and farmers, acquiring a scientific knowledge of arboriculture in order to qualify 

 themselves for the efficient management of their own lands. The curriculum in the 

 forestry 6chool includes botany, the chemistry of the soil, a little natural philoso- 

 phy, surveying, and the practical work of planting and rearing trees. Instruction 

 is given to the pupils by Japanese officials, one of whom holds the rank of professor, 

 who have themselves studied forestry in the schools of Germany. Large plantations 

 have been formed under Government auspices, and every year the area of forest land 

 is being added to — cedars, oaks, spruces, and firs being the trees more generally 

 planted. The systematic surveying of the forests is a work that is being pushed 

 forward. Within the past few years an important experiment has been made in the 

 introduction into Japan of the seeds of trees and shrubs from other countries. Tea 

 of course is extensively cultivated, but it was only in 1679 that the first coffee berries 

 were brought from the Sandwich Islands and planted in Japan, and there are great 

 hopes of the successful ness of the experiment from a commercial point of view. The 

 chinchona tree was introduced from India in 1878, but the climate of Japan does not 

 seem to suit it, and in l£S0 large importations of the seeds of forest trees wero made 

 fr om America aud Europe, and planted ia the experimental gardens of the forestry de- 

 partment at Tokio. Some were failures and others took favorably to the country — the 

 list including several firs, oaks, and maples, the birch, the hornbeam, the German 

 larch, the lime, the ash, Pinus xoebbiana, and other trees, which will in time form an 

 important addition to the timber supply of the country. Extending, as the many 

 islands of which the Empire of Japan is made up, over 15 degrees of latitude, and with 

 high central ridges of mountains on the larger islands, the climate differs very much 

 in the north and south, on the plain aud in the mountains ; so that the vegetation 

 of Japan partakes both of tropical and temperate zone characteristics. On a care- 

 fully prepared chart in the exhibition, by Japanese arboriculturists, the Empire was 

 mapped out into five tree regions or zones. In the first the temperature is high and 

 the forests consist of broad-leaved evergreen trees, of which Ficus wightiana is 

 giveu as a type. Then comes the zone of the oak and the beech and other broad- 

 leaved deciduous trees; next that of the splendid family of cedars, Thujas and liet- 

 inosporas (arbor-vitw),for which the country is remarkable. Higher still is the region 

 of the firs and pines, of which Abies veiichii is given as a type — the conifers including 

 many of the stateliest of this most interesting family. Chief among the trees of 

 Japan, however, are Cryptomeria japonica and Iietinospora obtusa, which attain to a 

 height of 120 feet and a girth of 20 feet. To those who have only been accustomed to 

 see small dwarf specimens of the Japanese arbor vitas and conifers used for lawn deco- 

 ration, nothing is more astonishing than the great slabs of wood which such trees 

 supply in their native country. Of such slabs many specimens are showu, all of 

 splendid quality, and there are also beautiful sections of finely framed camphor wood, 

 lovely maples and bird cherries, junipers and yews — the ornamental woods, indeed, be- 

 ing exceedingly numerous. A very useful hard wood in Japan is keyeki, which has a 

 reddish hue, and there are many varieties of oak, none ol which, however, for quality 



