SILVICULTURE IN TRINIDAD. 1 35 



forest the heavy timber trees — and gigantic specimens they are 

 — are found at considerable distances apart, much ground 

 carrying nothing but bush, scrub trees and palms, intertwined 

 with creepers or " vines." In other words, the cubic content of 

 timber per acre is small though the individual trees are large. 

 Again, not all these big trees are valuable, the timber of many 

 being soft and useless. 



Three methods have been tried so far, with the object of 

 ascertaining which will best suit local conditions. The species 

 used, both of them indigenous to the island and found scattered 

 throughout the natural forest, are (i) Cedrela odorata (locally 

 called " Cedar," though of course it is a hardwood, conifers 

 being almost unknown in these southern latitudes), from which 

 the familiar cigar boxes are made, and (2) "Cypre" {Cordia 

 gerasca?ithus). 



In the first place, the ground must be cleared of natural 

 forest, and this is done, not by felling the trees, which would 

 prove too expensive where it is not intended to utilise the 

 timber, but each tree is ringed round and the wound well 

 rubbed with " weed killer." The trees do not take very long to 

 die under this treatment, and meanwhile the ground is being 

 cleared of surface vegetation, by gangs of labourers using the 

 " cutlass." This cutlass is the universal tool of Trinidad, being 

 used for everything, from felling large trees or weeding a flower- 

 bed, to opening a coconut or sharpening a pencil. 



The first method tried was Natural Regeneration, the 

 leaving of seed-bearing trees of the species required. This is 

 quite fairly successful. The young tree reaches a height of 

 about 3 feet in the first year's growth. There being no winter 

 in this part of the world, it must be remembered that growth 

 never stops, though it slows down in the dry season, and as the 

 surface vegetation, much of which is of a very woody fibrous 

 nature, grows with a rankness and speed not even attained by 

 our worst bracken areas in Scotland, a good deal of "cut- 

 lassing " is required to let the young tree get away. Once the 

 tree has got fairly above the bush growth, it is left to fight its 

 own battle and no more cleaning is done. Looking at an area 

 treated in this fashion in the eighth year of growth, when 

 unaccustomed to tropical conditions, one has difficulty in realis- 

 ing that anything at all has been achieved. It looks just a 

 mass of spindly, lanky, thin-stemmed jungle. You have to look 



