130 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
we are told, “are recorded interesting details of the progress of 
investigations or of experiments made in the endeavour to ascertain 
the reason of the failure of teak regeneration in protected forests. 
So far as these have proceeded, it appears evident that the 
absence of sufficient light, or the presence of excessive under- 
growth, are the retarding causes; but the problem of how to pro- 
vide, over large areas of natural forest, for the former without 
inducing the latter is still unsolved.” 
‘The maintenance and the increase of future supplies of teak 
timber are matters of vast importance not only to Burma alone, 
or to India alone, but also to the whole British empire and the 
world at large. The natural forests in which teak is indigenous 
are partly dry and partly moist in character, but the dry forests 
constitute the most extensive and the most valuable tracts. In 
their natural condition these are annually overrun by ground 
fires, spreading from the rice-fields burned over in March and 
allowed to eat their way along the ground unchecked into the 
woodlands. These ground-fires entirely consume the dead foli- 
age and debris in the woods, so that the ground is often as bare 
as it is possible to conceive it, even large logs, which smoulder 
for days on end and break into flame at night, being often 
reduced to nothing but a long line of white or greyish ash. On 
the heavy rains setting in, the soft surface-soil is washed away, 
and the surface is cleared again by fire in the following hot 
season; and so on, year after year. 
One effect of this is that vast numbers of teak saplings get 
burned and killed each year, new shoots being thrown up from 
the root-stock in the succeeding rainy season, until by some 
chance the shoots escape scorching and so grow into poles with 
bark thick enough near the base to resist the scorching of the 
ground-fire. This fortunate condition is supplied by the flower- 
ing and regeneration of the bamboo undergrowth at irregular 
intervals of from about ten or fifteen to over fifty years, accord- 
ing to the species of bamboo prevailing locally—because for 
two or three years after the seeding of the bamboo a dense 
growth of moist thicket springs up, impenetrable even to the 
fire. One consequence of this is, that the natural age-classes 
among the teak and the other trees forming the overwood vary 
according to the dates at which the seedings of the bamboo 
underwood have taken place. 
In the most important teak-tracts of Lower Burma, the slopes 
