[20 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
beams and wall-plates, to drinking-cups and walking-sticks, while 
it is also used as fuel and burnt as incense. The bark at the 
base of old trees is of immense thickness, and is pulled off in 
long strips and used for roofing huts. This juniper forms pure 
forests at Ziarat in Beluchistan, and in the Pil and Zarghun 
ranges, while in the Haridb district it forms fully half of the 
~ forest at gooo feet, and has Pys¢acia, a kind of ash, and the ebony 
prune as its chief associates. The finest tracts of juniper are 
those of the open forests of Ziarat, about 60 miles to the east 
of Quetta, the capital of Beluchistan, where they extend for 
over 200 square miles. The trees generally branch from the 
base, straight stems and clean boles being very rare. The 
lowest branches are often buried in leaf-mould and dead foliage, — 
so that they have the appearance of younger growth rising up 
round a parent stem. The rate of growth is slow, though the 
trees occasionally rise to a height of 70 feet and attain a girth of 
20 feet. Although it reproduces itself naturally from seed, it often 
happens that very few of the seedlings survive, owing to fire. 
Throughout these juniper tracts the hill-sides still show remains 
of old stems killed through fires lit against them by shepherds at 
night, in order to scare wild beasts from the flocks,—a practice 
that is now, fortunately, almost extinct. Happily, too, most of 
such dead trees are surrounded by a younger generation of 
saplings, poles and young trees growing vigorously without 
much shelter. The principal agent in sowing the seed is a 
bird called the ‘ Obisht-khwarak,” or juniper-eater. Though 
slow, the reproduction of these forests is now ensured, and the 
fears once entertained as to maintaining the supply of wood for 
future use are now at an end. In its Himalayan habitat the 
juniper is usually found growing gregariously on rocky slopes, 
where it does not generally grow over about 50 feet in height, 
though its girth is often considerable, 6 to 7 feet being not 
uncommon. Exceptional girths of 20 feet and more are sometimes 
reached, the largest being 33} feet, at Lahoul. 
The Kuatrr, or CuTcH-TREE (Acacia Catechu), is a tree of 
exceptional value, not only on account of its very hard, heavy, 
and durable wood, varying from dark red-brown to light brick- 
red in colour, but also, and more particularly, from the brown- 
black astringent product, the “cutch” of commerce, obtained 
from boiling chips of the heartwood, and known as ath in 
Northern India and sha in Burma, the preservative dye used to 
