4 BURMA, ITS PEOPLE AXD PRODUCTIONS. 



another in iTaulmain, and a tliird abounds between Toung-ngoo and the Ecd Karen 

 table land. The pine is nowhere found at high temperatures, yet it is a common 

 denizen of our forests from Maulmain to Toung-ngoo. The common English brake 

 has been found by Mr. Parish as low as one thousand feet above the sea. The silver 

 feni of Kamptscliatka grows on the fort walls of Toung-ngoo, and a moss that 

 Mr. Parish g;ithered from a tree in Maulmain has been found on mountains four 

 thousand feet high in New Cfrenada." 



j^o doubt the reason of the difference here indicated between the altitudinal 

 range of the same or cognate species of plants in Burma and continental India, is 

 due mainly to the superior humidity of the former province, the heated and dry low 

 hinds of the latter country not siifHcing for many plants, which are not therefore 

 met with before a considerable lise above the sea-level has been made, with a 

 corresponding increase of humidity in the atmosphere. Increased moisture is 

 naturally correlated with an increase in the vegetable garb of the land, and both 

 vegetation and moisture react on and promote each other. 



I have been myself wonderfully struck with the illustration of this fact, and its 

 bearings on the climate of the country, atforded by the strip of hilly eountiy east of tlie 

 Tsittoung, below the frontier. All the hills here, over a thousand feet in height or 

 thereabouts, are covered with the familiar ' bracken,' and a glorious thing it is to tramp 

 through this familiar plant of our childhood, in the distant East. The climate, of 

 course, is found to correspond to the indication the presence of this fern gives, and at 

 night I have felt none too wami under a blanket in the month of April, when not 20 

 miles off, a sheet was as much as could be comfortably borne, the difference in alti- 

 tude at either place being not more say than 1500 feet. At first sight the reason of 

 this wondrous change in climate ilirectly we cross the Tsittoung is not obvious, but it 

 really depends on the geological structure of the countiy, or, at all events, in those 

 places where the contrast is most marked. "West of the Tsittoung is the broad alluvial 

 plain traversed by the river, bounded by the system of hills of the Pegu range, 

 composed of Tertiary sandstone very little disturbed. East of the Tsittoung the hills 

 are composed of ciystalline rocks, traversed by many trap dykes. Kow these dykes 

 cut the subterranean drainage, and thereby throw up niimerous springs, which 

 irrigate the surface naturally and difluse abundant moisture, with a corresponding 

 increase in the density of the vegetation and decrease in the mean temperature. 

 The quality of the soil produced by the decomposition of these crystalline rocks 

 may, no doubt, have a share in the result I have described, but it is most largely 

 due, I feel convinced, to increased hiimidity. Take, for example, a section of the 

 same sandstone range — the Pegu range — across the valley. A London square does 

 not offer a greater contrast to the "Palm house" at Kew [nndatis mvtandiis) than 

 do the arid outer slopes of the range, for years scathed by jungle fires, clearings 

 and cultivation, to similar hills towards the central ranges, which have escaped the 

 axe of the nomad cultivator, and are still clad with virgin forest, with its perennial 

 springs, unimpaired by ruthless clearance over vast areas of Nature's kindly garb. 

 To pass out of the arid region of these outer hills, in the hot season, into the cool 

 and moist retreats of the inner hills, is like passing from purgatory into paradise, 

 and if the trees cannot say as much in words, they indubitably demonstrate the fact 

 by their looks, growth, and development, and Dr. Mason was therefore enunciating 

 a simple axiom when he wrote: "The Flora reads a lesson on the climate of the 

 country, which cannot be mistaken ; and, in accordance with it, where pines and 

 rhododendrons are found in Toung-ngoo, hoar frost is seen in January." 



The present is an appropriate place for reviewing the various descriptions of 

 Forest, as recognised by the Forest Department, and the trees which characterise 

 them, as so ably described by Kiirz in his Forest Flora,' and I can only regret that so 

 much doubt should attach to so many of the Burmese names enumerated therein. 



1 Forest Flora of British Burma, by S. Kurz. Calcutta, 1S77. 



