II2 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
wild and unadministered forest regions of Farther India have 
not yet been examined. 
Among all this wealth of woody fibrous plants, about 1450, 
including exotics, have been described in Gamble’s Manual 
with regard to their general appearance and the character of 
their wood. But what may be termed the chief timber-trees of 
India consist of about thirteen kinds, a baker’s dozen (teak, sal, 
deodar, sissoo, babul, juniper, kheir or cutch, blackwood, sandal- 
wood, red sanders, and the three ironwoods— pyingado, nahér, and 
anjdn), while a fourteenth, the mahwa of Central India, though 
also yielding excellent timber, is of much greater value for its 
flowers, the sweet and fleshy corollas of which form an important 
article of food through the local forest tracts. 
In point of actual monetary and mercantile value the TEAK- 
TREE (Zectona grandis) is facile princeps the most important of 
all the forest trees in India. Its moderately hard, golden-brown 
wood, which darkens considerably with age, is easily recognisable 
from the strongly-scented essential oil to which this timber owes 
its special suitability for shipbuilding—an oil which preserves 
steel and iron, in place of corroding them like the tannic acid 
contained in oak. The finest development of the teak-tree is 
attained in the mixed deciduous forests of Burma, whence about 
one and a half million pounds’ worth of this timber is annually 
exported. But it also occurs scattered throughout the dry 
forests in many parts of the Central Provinces and Madras, 
and on the Western Ghats in Bombay. It was from these 
Madras and Bombay forests, situated conveniently near the 
coast for shipment to Bombay, that considerable supplies of this 
fine timber were first of all obtained for local shipbuilding, and 
then for export for the use of the English navy about a hundred 
years ago, when the existing stock of home-grown oak had become 
almost exhausted, and when the national outlook for ship- 
building timber, during the time of our continental war, had 
reached its very gloomiest stage. It seems to thrive best in 
places with a mean annual temperature of between 70° and 80’, 
with a definite alternation of wet and dry seasons of the year, 
and without extremes of heat and cold. It is not exacting as 
to soil or aspect, so long as the drainage is good. ‘Teak is not 
a truly gregarious tree, but is usually to be found associated 
with many other deciduous trees growing above an underwood 
of bamboos. It seeds freely, and germinates fairly well in clear 
