in the Himalaya. I hoped to see, in the early morning, one of the rare Mikado pheasants which had only been recently discovered in Formosa; but these very shy birds avoid inhabited places and seem to keep to the thickets of dwarf bamboo-grass which are found rather higher up. The cypress forest round Arisan is, however, the great attraction. The Cypresses are composed of two species, one of which, C.formosensis, known to the Japanese as Benihi, is the largest Cypress in the world. The other species is the Japanese C. obtusa, known as Hinoki in Japanese. As no one has yet described them in English, I took careful notes and measure¬ ments of these wonderful trees. The former has smoother bark, greyer and more sparse foliage, and a more ragged habit of growth. When young trees grow together, they may be easily distinguished by their coloui, the Hinoki forming shapely pyramids, which the Benihi does not do. The old trees are much buttressed at the base and often grow on the top of a fallen log which decays very slowly. The bark is very thin, from an eighth to a quarter of an inch in thickness , and the proportion of sap to heartwood is very small. The scent of the wood is very aromatic and persistent, remaining strong after several years in a cabinet which I had lined with it. The growth of the trees seems very slow, and in a dense stand trees 100 feet or more high were only about 3 or 4 feet in girth. Towards the upper edge of the forest there was a dense undergrowth of a bamboo known as Arundinaria Niitakayamensis, Niitakayama being the Japanese name for Mt, Morrison, the highest mountain of the island, whose snowy ridge we could see plainly when we came out on the open summit of the hill above Arisan. On this open space a number of Nutcrackers, Nucifraga Oustoni, nearly allied to the Himalayan species, were feeding on the seeds of a Pine, which is considered identical with the Chinese P. armandi and has attained no feet by 13 feet. From this opening in the forest we followed a path along a ridge for some way and were pleased to meet Mr. Goodfellow, a distinguished bird collector, who had come specially to Formosa a month or more previously in order to obtain living specimens of the Mikado pheasant. He was camped in the forest several miles away, and invited us to join him when we returned later. In the afternoon I measured some of the large trees near Arisan, especially one which is entirely peculiar to this forest, so far as known at present, and forms a monotypic genus. This is called Taiwania cryptomerioides, and when adult it has a very similar aspect to the old trees of the Chilean Araucaria, which I saw in the Southern Andes in 1901–2. The trees, however, were very few in number and scattered among Cypress, and I could find no young or seedling trees small enough to move. By far the largest tree was very near the station, and by a careful measurement I made it 190 feet by 28 feet.
Next day Price returned with Mr. Goodfellow to his camp, and I went for a long round through the forest with Mr. Shirasawa and one of the local foresters to see the forest which the Government are preparing to exploit as soon as the railway is completed. Among the trees we saw were several oaks, one of which, Q. Jiujuri, attains a great size, one log being 9 feet in girth at 50 feet from the butt. Cinnamomum randaiense was another fine evergreen tree. At 6,800 feet I found a fine
