wild on the coast on the east side of the gulf of Kagoshima, but which he thinks must have been introduced there from the Liukiu islands. Outside the gates I saw a fine tree of Ilex rotunda, a nearly deciduous species of holly, covered with red berries, which a little way off looked like flowers. The next day I saw Price off to Liukiu, and parted from him with much regret, as during the four months we had been together he had been a most agreeable and congenial companion. After staying some time in Liukiu he returned to Formosa, where he spent some months in botanical exploration, I then started with Mr. Takei for a station called Makisono one and a half hours north of Kagoshima, to visit the volcano of Kirishima. A comfortable chair with four bearers was ready at the station, on which I passed through a pretty hilly country more or less wooded with Pinus Thunbergi, evergreen oaks, camphor and other trees, and cultivated with bearded wheat, barley and rape.
At a village school which we passed, the children, who seemed clean, well-fed and clothed, were doing Swedish gymnastic exercises. In this district horses are more used than I have seen elsewhere in Japan, except in Hokkaido, both for carts and pack-saddles, but bulls are also employed for drawing small two-wheeled carts, with solid wooden wheels only one and a half to two feet in diameter.
At about two hours from the station we came to a large Government Tree Nursery, where large quantities of Cryptomeria, Cupressus obtusa, Camphor trees and oaks were raised in a fine rich volcanic soil. At this elevation, about 1,000 feet, I was told that the temperature in February— the coldest month—might fall to about 22° Fahr., which did not injure the camphor seedlings, and the rainfall is sixty to seventy inches.
On leaving this place we began to ascend to an open country covered with coarse grass, which is burnt annually to improve the pasture, and here we found a large Government Horse Breeding Farm called Makizono, under the direction of a Japanese gentleman, Mr. Nakanishi, who spoke English, and showed me his imported English thoroughbred stallion about sixteen hands high, which I thought too big and leggy to suit the mares of the country. A half-bred stallion bred from one of them had the same character as the sire. At this farm they had a lot of land ploughed and sown with oats, and a selection of English agricultural implements which I thought too heavy for the soil and the cattle which would draw them.
It seems rather the custom of the Japanese Government here, as in Formosa, to start these enterprises with foreign stock, without much regard to their suitability to the country. Japanese do not, as a rule, seem to have much natural aptitude for stock breeding, for which their soil, climate and fodder are rarely suited, and I did not see in any part of Japan which I visited in 1904 any really good cattle, sheep or horses, or any country which seemed well adapted for producing them, as the grasses are too hard and wiry, and there is no really good grazing. Higher up we got into bits of nice forest in which Acanthopanax ricinifolium was coming into leaf, and I have proved that this tree, which attains a very large size in Japan, is quite hardy in England. After ascending another three or four miles we came to the hot baths which are beautifully situated
