I settled up with Shirasawa, who had been most helpful and obliging during my visit, but who now had to return to his work in Japan. After taking leave of him, I went back to Kagi, where I met Price, and started again for Arisan. The weather was much warmer now than it had been a fortnight ago, and when we got up to Funchiko we found many plants, newly come into flower, among them Viola diffusa, a fine large species of Paris very like the Himalayan P. hexaphylla, and an Aristenia very like the A. concinnum of Sikkim, which is hardy in my garden at home. Butterflies were now coming out, all belonging to Indian genera, as were the few birds we shot and skinned. Near the road I found a large camphor tree, of which part only of the trunk had been converted into chips for distillation, probably because it was of the variety which only yields oil. I believe that in these forests, which are not as yet under the direct management of the Forest Department, most of the camphor is produced by Chinese, who have a licence to work but are obliged to turn over all their camphor to the Government at a low fixed pi ice, Where they find a large tree growing, they camp beside it and erect a small still. The whole of the wood is then converted into chips by a tool like a gouge. Many trees are also found in the river-beds during the dry season, which have been uprooted during the rainy season in landslips and carried down by the flood. In one of these camphor camps a woman attended to the still while the men cut and carried in the chips.
On the 27th we had a very pleasant march up to Arisan, but, though the day was fine, did not get many birds or butterflies. It was a good deal warmer than on our first visit and many new plants were in flower, among these the most interesting was a fine white-flowered root parasite Monotropa which is found in Japan also, and is nearly allied to, though much larger than, our English plant, commonly known as the Yellow Bird's-nest. The next day was mainly spent in photographing trees and measuring them. I found that the largest C. formosensis was 190 feet by 30 feet, as nearly as I could get it, but there may be taller ones in gorges which we could not reach. I found the trunk of a large Taiwania recently felled, which was being cut up into planks by the Japanese sawyers in a most ingenious way. The saw used was a broad-bladed single-handed saw with a blade 30 inches long by 18 inches deep. This broad blade keeps the cut true. When the man, after chalking his line on the upper side of the log, has cut it from end to end as deep as his saw will reach, he then turns his log over and makes a new cut on the other side so exactly true to the first that you would hardly know it had not been done on a saw-pit by using a long two-handed saw. I tried to count the rings of growth on the stump of this tree, but could not do so accurately. I estimated not less than 400 on a stump 8 or 9 feet across, but possibly it was much older. The sapwood, as in the Cypress, was very thin and the bark only from a quarter to half inch thick. There were many deep red streaks in the heartwood, I have now, after seeing more of the wood sawed up, come to the conclusion that the Hinoki Cypress, though a much smaller tree, has finer wood than the Benihi and has a sweeter smell. On one log, only 3 feet diameter, I counted 400 annual rings, and got some boards from it which, however, I was not able to,
