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Pines, Fir trees, and Cryptomerias have also the halo of sanctity about them. Whenever we find a stately avenue of the dark bronze and blue-green Firs, we may know that sooner or later they will lead us to a temple, or some sacred shrine. Buddhist and Shinto alike plant these great conifers on the hill sites where their holy places are, and they are almost as infallible a sign of the proximity of a temple as are rows of stone lanterns, or the red wooden gateways called Torii. At Nikko there is a tree, a conifer of some sort, set around with a stone railing, visited, loved and venerated still, which, when it was a baby plant a few inches high in a flower-pot cradle, is said to have been brought there by the great Iyeyasu. To this famous men come and leave a visiting card, as is the Japanese custom nowadays in going to heroes’ graves.

Another tree, like the latter too