In a highly interesting and most esthetic manner do the beautiful gardens of Fair Japan in the South Midway, illustrate the love of nature, or art and of the grotesque, for which the Japanese people are noted. Rare floral specimens, from which the favorite Oriental perfumes are culled by secret process, shed their fragrance about the place. Vines and shrubs that have been made to take on the form of birds and fowl dot the banks of the pretty stream that courses through the village. Roots of trees brought from parts of Japan where the earth is so volcanic that only a thin layer of fertile soil overlies the solid lava rock beneath, find their way upward and twine themselves into fantastic trellises and arches before reaching their tips down into the ground again for nourishment.

But it is in the dwarf trees, with which the pretty Japanese village abounds, that the remarkable horticultural skill of the native gardeners is best shown. Every branch and twig, every knot and wrinkle of the bark is tiny in exact proportion. The trees are trained and checked and persuaded until they take on the most picturesque possible form. The effects of age, of accident and of storm are exactly produced. Some of the trees are not two feet high, but they are as gnarled and knotted and mossy as the oldest inhabitants of an undiscovered forest. In a massive jardiniere, at the entrance to the tea-house, is a miniature "shochikubai," which is the Japanese term of dwarf pine, bamboo and plum trees grown together in one pot. The main characteristics of each plant are distinctly visible when closely examined, but the composite product as a whole presents a most unique appearance.