NOTES ON INDIAN FORESTRY IN 1905. 133 
any rate, further difficulties will be placed in the way of the 
regeneration of teak, although Mr Troup’s pessimistic conclu- 
sion “that we are most certainly exterminating our teak by fire- 
protection,” is, no doubt, far too sweeping an assertion, even 
although based on the fact that fewer teak seedlings and young 
poles are to be found in fire-protected areas than in otherwise 
similar but non-protected tracts. 
Fire is certainly a most useful agent to clear the ground for 
the reception of the teak-seed at the time of the seeding of the 
bamboo—and even at other times it may often again be a 
powerful and beneficent agent, when applied under proper control ; 
and after a crop of young teak seedlings is formed, fire-protection 
is undoubtedly beneficial until the bark of the young poles is 
able to withstand the destructive action of annual fires. Later 
on, one can quite easily conceive fire-protection tending to 
benefit inferior kinds of trees and bamboos in greater ratio than 
it benefits teak, and thus of favouring the natural regeneration 
of these at the expense of the teak, and therefore making @ 
normal sertes of teak of all age-classes on one and the same area 
impracticable, and perhaps even impossible. But is such a 
grouping together of age-classes an actual necessity? Or is it 
under such given circumstances either really desirable or at all 
practicable? These are questions that cannot be answered 
off-hand by a simple “yea” or “nay.” Many of the younger 
officers, whose experience may have been chiefly in- forests 
already managed for the last fifteen to twenty years under a 
working-plan (the oldest dates only from 1885), can perhaps 
have only an imperfect idea of the great extent to which mature 
and maturing teak trees in the natural forests used to be badly 
damaged and hollowed in the butt and far up into the most 
valuable part of the stem by the destructive action of fire; for 
all such trees were to be cleared and extracted except where of 
small value as timber and necessary for seed production. But 
it is perhaps just as unwise to generalise from one or two well- 
recorded observations as it would be to jump to a conclusion 
from the expression of mere general impressions unsupported by 
accurate data; and in any case, before the Local Government 
and the Government of India can be approached with any well- 
considered scheme for their acceptance concerning such an 
important matter, it would seem very desirable to make further 
investigations carefully and systematically. Certainly the pre- 
