FLORIDA ,STATE HORTICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
97 
completely penetrate the translucent pa¬ 
per, and you miss the peachy ruddiness of 
our sun-ripened peaches. Still, they are 
very good. 
The dwarfing process of fruit trees 
consists in pinching and clipping off the 
tender shoots, only permitting enough 
new wood to form and remain for the 
next crop, and they have reduced the 
dwarfing problem to a most remarkable 
success. I saw dwarf pines and dwarf 
oaks that were said to be two or three 
hundred years old, growing in flower pots 
on a table. One of the gentlemen in one 
of the public gardens at Yokohama ex¬ 
plained to me that the way they did the 
dwarfing of ornamentals was to starve 
the trees. They are planted in just suffi¬ 
cient soil for them to germinate, and then 
the rootlets are covered with pebbles and 
no more sustenance in the way of soil 
given them. They are fed only with 
water, but must have this daily. In this 
way, the pine and other trees do not get 
taller than two or three feet in hundreds 
of years. 
We hear so much about the bloom of 
their cherry trees. We were a little early 
for the cheery bloom, although we saw 
some of it, but we were there in the 
midst of the plum-blooming season. The 
cherry and plum trees are used for orna¬ 
mental purposes alone. By a system of 
selection, they have brought about a kind 
of evolution in these trees so that they 
produce bloom rather than fruit. The 
fruit is of no value; it is small and insig¬ 
nificant. 
Some of the most remarkable things in 
the way of bamboo growth that it is pos¬ 
sible to imagine, is found in Japan. The 
bamboo is to the Japanese the most useful 
and valuable plant they have. It is not 
used as an ornament, except incidentally. 
Out of it they build houses and bridges 
and boats and everything that is useful 
and necessary, almost, for their comfort 
and happiness. 
One of the most wonderful things we 
saw in Japan is the cryptomeria. It be¬ 
longs to the same family, I was told, as 
the giant trees of California. At the 
temples at Nikko are found the most 
magnificent specimens, some of them run¬ 
ning up two or three times as high as tall 
pine trees such as we have in our country 7 . 
They line many of the narrow avenues on 
both sides, and some of these avenues are 
three and four miles long, with only width 
enough for a rickshaw to pass between. 
I asked a guide why the trees were so 
much more numerous around Nikko than 
any other place, and he told me that dur¬ 
ing the reign of one of their shoguns, who 
had his residence at that place, he exacted 
from the nobility that once a year they 
should come on a pilgrimage to his palace 
and bring gifts to him. There was one 
noble who was a great warrior, but who 
was very poor, and unable to bring gifts 
of silver and gold. “He no have much 
gold; he no have much silver; so every 
year he bring cryptomeria to plant. Other 
warriors laugh at his plants. Now, gold 
and silver all gone; cryptomeria still here. 
Joke on them.” 
I must hasten on ; or we shall not get 
very far in our wanderings. I saw be¬ 
sides these things horticultural that I 
have told you about, a number of polit¬ 
ical, social, manufacturing and commer¬ 
cial things that are of great interest, but 
we will not have time to talk about them. 
