132 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 
Meanwhile, however, the practical effect of the fire-protection 
carried on continuously for from twenty to thirty years has, in 
many parts, shown quite a different result from what was ex- 
pected; and one very important circumstance has now been 
noticed as frequent, which was never observable in former days, 
during the twenty years (1876-96) in which I spent many 
months of each year in the forests where the Ayathaung-bamboo 
formed the prevailing undergrowth. But that was the time 
when fire-protection was only being introduced, or had merely 
been recently introduced; and I can safely assert that if what 
has now been noticed as common had then already taken place, 
it could hardly have failed to be observed. The important 
physiological result of the influence of fire-protection on the 
reproductive power of the two chief species of bamboos has thus 
been described by a careful observer, Mr Troup:— 
“Tt is a fact which has, I believe, been noticed by many 
officers, that in bamboo areas, at anyrate of Ayathaung-wa and 
Tin-wa, which have been fire-protected for a long time, an 
undergrowth of smaller-sized bamboos of the same species tends 
to form. The precise mode of origin of this undergrowth, and 
its connection with the older bamboos, I have not ascertained.” 
It seems to me very probable that examination will show this 
new and lowest tier of undergrowth to be suckers thrown up 
from the rhizomes; and if this should prove to be the case, the 
. importance of the fact is great, because it will probably mean that 
there will, if this process continues in all such places, be no general 
flowering of the Kyathaung, as happened in 1853, and that con- 
sequently there will be no opportunity for natural regeneration 
of teak on a vast scale (assisted by artificial means) such as has. 
never before occurred. Nature, in effecting her objects, always 
operates along the line of least resistance ; and if the conditions 
artificially created by fire-protection enable her to regenerate the 
Kyathaung by means of suckers, she will certainly not undergo 
such an otherwise unnecessary physiological disturbance as is 
indicated by the non-production of the usually annual crop of 
shoots in order to store up the nutrient-reserves for accomplish- 
ing flowering and seed-production in the following year—a 
supreme effort involving a process of utter exhaustion, followed 
immediately by the death and decay of all the existing halms. 
And if such a change takes place (on any extensive scale) from 
what obtained before the introduction of fire-protection, then, at 
