Peking, Oct. 16.
Every year at this season we have a revival of interest in trees. During the summer when the many magnificent temple and graveyard groves are simply vast bunchings: of green, all trees, with the exception of the silver barked pine, lose their individuality and are only appreciated by tourists and picnic parties as affording -so much or so little shade. But at this season when every little clump on the landscape turns out in purple and} gold,.when the various fine old giants among the pines, the ginkes, the oaks, walnuts and cypresses abandon their uniforms and turn out in their individual finery, most of the rides, walks and picnics have trees as their objective and one hears everywhere much gossip of the merits of this or that tree or grove. The biggest—cypresses, we are told, are in the back court of the Sleeping Buddha monastery not far from the Summer Palace. The most magnificent white pine avenue leads to the graveyard of the Ming dynasty eunuchs at a place called Lung En Ssu, overlooking the Hun River valley. These trees were: planted 500 years ago to shade eunuch graves, but the Manchu invaders dug wp the eunuchs and they now form an avenue to the great mausoleum of the hereditary Dukes of Yi.
The most magnificent ginko,. we are told, stands in the plain near the temple-crowned hillock of Pa Pao Shan, seven or eight miles west-of the city. But by all odds the most famous ginko is-the giant beside the second prayer hall at -T'an Chia Ssu in the mountains, ten or twelve miles west of the Hun River. The trunk of this huge fern—for a ginko is biologically more a fern than a tree, botanists say—is about 25 feet in circumference and, according" to the priests who always prefer round numbers to accuracy, is now 1,000 years old. About it cluster many superstitions, carefully but not consistently fostered by the monastery. No two stories agree, but this does not prevent them all being taken seriously by the natives of the whole district. Before the tree stands a little arch and an inscription on the top records that the "Holy ancestor—benevolent Emperor," meaning Kang busi, visited. the tree and presumably admired. it, while when Ch'ien Lung came and looked upon it a new shoot grew up.
Out of this simple beginning has been elaborated the story that whenever an emperor is about to die a branch withers and dies, and! a new branch appears in token of a new emperor. It is said that) just before the death of the Empressd Dowager and Kuang Hsu, two branches withered while a new shoot came out for little Hsuan Tung, which ceased to grow when the Republic was later established. A few days ago a farmer, who had been talking with a pilgrim who
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.