Natural stones play a very important part in the gardens of Nippon. Some go so far as to maintain that the stones constitute the skeleton of the garden and that primary consideration should be given to their selection and distribution. They are valued for their size, shape, texture, colour, etc., according to the places where they are used. Sometimes stones of enormous sizes are drawn to gardens from distant mountains by teams of many oxen, spending weeks or months on the way. The writer has often seen a touching care, a tender attention being paid to those rocks on transportation not to scratch off a patch of moss or lichen covering the stone or not to break the branch of a small azalea growing from a crevice, so that what Nature has bestowed upon them in years of exposure may be preserved and appreciated in the garden. Sometimes the rocks, too big to be transported whole, are split into many pieces and cemented together into the original form again in the garden. A minute care should be taken in assigning places for the stones gathered from all over the country. To those found on the seashore a place should be given by the garden lake, and those belonging to the mountain should be so placed as far as possible according to their shapes and sizes; some to be embedded on the hill, others to be used for the construction of a precipice, cascade, etc. For their effective use, especially for their grouping or composition, an endless study has been made and the secrets that experience has taught have been handed down to us in drawings. It will be too great a subject to be dealt here in detail, but suffice it to be mentioned that the stones according to their shapes are classified into five varieties, "statue," "low-vertical," "flat," "recumbent" and "arching" stones, and that there are rules of combining them to meet different requirements in the garden.
