646 Forestry Quarterly 



sufficiently often with improvement fellings to effectively increase 

 teak reproduction and thus increase the proportion of teak, 

 has lead to a search for some system which would make 

 possible concentrated regeneration fellings. The importance 

 of settling upon some such system is obvious as teak occurs 

 only in two or three mature trees per acre in a forest which 

 is probably composed of 80 per cent other species, not removed 

 at the time of the cutting of the teak. Working teak under the 

 present selection method is therefore attended by two disadvan- 

 tages, the proportion of teak is not increased and may possibly be 

 decreased by the continuance of what is really inverse selection, 

 and the forest is only being one fifth worked, the other four fifths 

 of the capital standing idle. No wood less valuable than teak, 

 would permit such a costly system of management. 



The present method of selection working with teak really 

 represents a triiimph for forestry. By means of the regulation it 

 provided, the teak forests of india have been saved. Timber 

 worth $50 to $60 per M in the log, and nearly all of it accessible at 

 logging costs not exceeding $30 to $40 per M would not have been 

 left long standing in a territory as new as Burma if the selection 

 system had not been courageously applied to all lands. As it is, 

 the proportion of teak has not suffered greatly, if at all in half a 

 century of operations, and the Forest Service in control of the 

 situation is now on the groimd vv^ith increased experience to study 

 possible improvements. Two systems under trial are the Shelter- 

 wood Compartment system, known in India as the Uniform system 

 and the French Quartier Bleu system. 



The introduction of the Shelterwood Compartment system will 

 probably be facilitated when conditions make it possible to utilize 

 several of the species occurring with teak. A small area of forest 

 is now being worked on this system in Burma where all species 

 excepting teak must be cut and left to rot. 



The conditions under which forests are worked by improvement 

 fellings are much the same as described for the selection system. 

 The one is applied to a forest in comparatively good natural 

 condition containing mature trees, the other is applied to forests 

 hacked and burned over in the past and now being brought to a 

 natural state. Here again the Forest Service did all that probably 

 could be done at the time, restricted to the inferior trees, the cut- 

 ting of timber which the population demanded, worked the forest 



