Where I first saw it, on a sandy plain above the Lake Chuzenji on the slopes of the volcano of Nantai-san, the trees were of no great size, averaging perhaps 60 to 70 feet in height, with a girth rarely exceeding 6 feet in mature trees, and more often 3 to 4 feet. They were very similar in habit to the larch in the Alps, and had not an excessive development of branches. Higher up above Yumoto in rich forest soil, thinly scattered among deciduous trees of many species, they were larger, sometimes attaining 80 feet high and 10 to 12 feet in girth; but I saw none anywhere which rivalled our larch in height, and am inclined to think it is not nearly such a long-lived tree, though, as I saw none felled, I was unable to count the rings. Prof. Sargent, who saw the tree in the same place as I did, came to a very similar conclusion. Mayr states that he found it wild on the volcanoes of central Hondo, Fuji, Ontake, Asama, Shiranesan, Norikura, and others, always growing near the timber line, with Abies, Tsuga, and Picea hondoensis.
The tree is valued for its timber, which is used for ship- and boat-building, and has lately come into great demand for railway sleepers and telegraph poles. In consequence of this it has been largely planted at elevations of 4000 to 5000 feet in the central and northern provinces, and many plantations that I saw of ten to fifteen years old were very similar to larch plantations in England in growth and habit. I also saw it planted experimentally in Hokkaido, along the lines of railway, where it seemed to grow as well in this rich black soil as in its native mountains.
Cultivation
In 1890 I sowed seeds from three different localities—Dunkeld, Hildenley, and Tortworth—and raised plants from each of them, which grew better than seedlings raised at the same time from Japanese seed; but this may have been partly due to the fact that the latter were dressed with paraffin by my forester to protect them from birds and mice in the seed-bed. At six years old these plants are now from four to eight feet high, and though some of them have been more or less checked by severe spring frosts, they are generally growing well.
As a proof of the hardiness of the tree I may mention that the late Sir R. Menzies showed me three young trees which he had planted, at an elevation of about 1250 feet, in the garden of the inn near the top of the pass between Glen Lyon and Loch Rannoch; and in some of his plantations on the north shore of Loch Rannoch they were growing very vigorously in mixture with Douglas fir.
No conifer of recent introduction has attracted so much attention among foresters as the Japanese larch, which, during the last ten years, has been sown very largely by nurserymen (Messrs. Dickson of Chester are said to have sold no less than 750,000 in the year 1905), and is looked upon by many foresters as likely to replace the common larch, because it is, so far as we yet know, less liable to the attacks of Peziza Willkommiii. But this pest has already in more than one place been certainly identified on the Japanese larch, and I have little doubt that as time goes on we shall hear more of this. Henry visited in 1904 six plantations of Japanese larch of ages from five to sixteen years, and in none could detect any sign of canker. There
