NOTES ON INDIAN FORESTRY IN 1905. 131 
of the Pegu Yoma or hill-range between the Irrawaddy and the 
Sittang rivers, the largest and most important tracts are those in 
which the Ayuthaung-bamboo (Lambusa polymorpha) prevails, 
and which may be put down as well over 2000 square miles in 
this part of Burma alone. The last seeding took place about 
1853, immediately after the annexation of Pegu. ‘The result of 
the seeding was that an immense natural increase took place in 
jungle-fowl, rats, etc., owing to the vast abnormal increase in 
food; and this plague of rats in the following year, when the 
bamboo seeds had rotted or germinated, entirely destroyed the 
rice cultivation of ‘the nomadic hill-tribes, so that famine ensued, 
and was followed by an epidemic of small-pox. Unless Govern- 
ment takes adequate precautions, this will again be followed by 
similar results when the Ayathaung-bamboo next seeds; and its 
flowering might easily have taken place at any time within these 
last ten or twelve years. Fortunately it can be foretold one 
year in advance, because no new shoots are thrown out during 
the year before flowering, the reserve-nutrients being stored by 
nature for the supreme effort of seed-production, after which the 
bamboo-crop dies and rots; and this phenomenon occurs 
simultaneously over all the area dominated by this species of 
bamboo, although sporadic flowering of smaller kinds is frequent, 
as in the case of the Z7z-bamboo (Cephalostachyum pergracile), 
which ranks next to the Aya¢haung in importance and distribution. 
As the next flowering of the Ayathaung-bamboo must prob- 
ably mean sylvicultural possibilities on a vast scale, it seemed 
to me (while Conservator in charge of the Pegu circle in 1895) 
that a scheme should be considered and adopted for coping 
with the work when the time came, and for determining before- 
hand what could be done to utilise the circumstance and to 
provide work and food for the hill-tribes, in order to save them 
from the danger of famine and subsequent epidemics,—because 
efficient administration should, I thought, provide for such 
matters beforehand; and unless a definite scheme of operations 
were considered and prepared for action, it would be impossible 
to utilise the grand opportunity economically and to the fullest 
extent possible, since, of course, intensive operations cannot be 
carried out over the whole of the area affected. This proposal 
was pooh-poohed by the then officiating Inspector-General, but 
it has recently, I understand, been revived with more satisfactory 
results. 
