BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 127 
BOTANICAL INFORMATION. 
Note on the Vegetation of Rangoon, in a Letter from Dr. M‘CLELLAND, 
dated May 31, 1854. 
I have lately been chiefly occupied in devising a tariff for the regu- 
lation of the future trade in Teak timber, together with forest rules. 
The forests I visited occupy the southern extremities of the range of 
‘hills which run southward from the centre of Burmah proper into Pegu, 
terminating about sixty miles north of Rangoon, where they spread out 
into a hilly tract between the Irawaddi and Sitang Rivers, and are in- 
tersected by numerous minor streams in every direction, by means of 
which the timber is floated to Rangoon. The chief peculiarity of the 
country is the slight inclination or fall of the river; so that tides extend 
probably in some cases eighty to one hundred miles in the interior, and 
indeed up almost to the foot of the hills where teak grows. They are 
however found of small size long before you arrive at the principal 
forests, which are invariably at an elevation of a few hundred feet from 
the beds of the streams, and always at their extreme or remotest tributa- 
ries, where they are confined to hot sheltered southern declivities, never 
found on northern slopes. It is this peculiarity which appears to me 
to account for the limited extent to which Teak occurs in any one place, 
more especially in a hilly country. The lower and more accessible 
forests have been very much exhausted, so that little large or full-grown 
timber is to be found, except in places were the expense of removal 
will be considerable. The remedy for this will of course be the preser- 
vation of the lower forests and especially of undersized timber. 
Rattans, and two species of Licuala, with Melica latifolia, ete., one 
or two species of Polypodium and Ophioglossum, form the low vegeta- 
tion along the course of the streams, with Bombax, Dalbergia, Ficus, —— 
Sterculia, Grewia, Lagerstremia, etc., Teak being entirely absent. It is — 
only when we ascend a few hundred feet that we find it, confined, as — 
already observed, to the southern aspect of the hills, and associated 
always with Blackwellia, Pentaptera, Inga, Xylocarpa, Dalbergia, etc., — 
with little underwood ; the little there is being composed of two or three — 
species of Leea, Ardisia solanacea, Hibiscus Lampas, Connarus nitida, 
with the following annuals :—Justicia, Strobilanthus scaber, Dracena — 
