contrast beautifully with the dark green foliage. The
stem is ringed with the marks of the fallen leaves, very like the stems
of the castor-oil plants which are often seen in pots in England.

The stem of the rice-paper plant is hollow, and filled with a pith
which, though it is rather broken in the centre, is firm and compact
outside. After the tree has reached a certain age, the pith becomes less
serviceable, and so the tree is usually cut down when it is about twelve
feet high, before it has attained its full growth. The stem is cut into
lengths of nine or twelve inches each, and the pith is pushed out by
inserting a stick at one end, and hammering it through the core of the
tree. The little rolls of pith obtained in this way are placed in hollow
bamboos, which permit them to swell a little, but prevent them from
curling up as they dry. When properly dried, they are ready for the
cutting, which is the really skilful part of the making of rice-paper.
The man who cuts up the pith has a long, sharp knife, which he places
against the side of the roll of pith in such a way that it will take off
a thin paring as he turns the roll round and round. It is like paring
off the bark of a log by rolling it round against a sharp knife, with
these differences, however, that the paring is as thin as paper, and
that it is part of the log itself, and goes on until the broken centre
is reached. The parings, or sheets, when stripped off, are about four
feet long, and they are placed one upon the other and pressed, after
which they are cut into squares like those described above. The squares
are made up into packets of one hundred each, which the Chinese sell for
five or six farthings a packet. Many of these little squares are dyed or
stained different colours, and are used for making little artificial
flowers; others, as we have already seen, are covered with little
pictures, representing sometimes the people and the costumes of China,
and sometimes the birds, butterflies, and animals of that country.

There are a few other trees or plants which yield a pith from which
rice-paper can be made; but the _Aralia_ is the most important. Though
the tree grows best in the northern part of Formosa, the paper is made
less by the Formosans than by the Chinese, who barter their goods for
the rice-paper trees or logs.

[Illustration: "How it tasted--well, I've never heard!"]

TOO TEMPTING TO BE LOST.

A fox one day had left his cos