232 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY, 
The Department is steadily striving to find uses and profitable 
markets for its produce. Throughout 1905 a wood-pulp expert 
from home was engaged at the Rangoon timber depot in making 
experiments with bamboos and about a dozen different kinds of 
abundant trees as yet of little or no local value, in order to try 
and ascertain if there be any chance of producing a marketable 
pulp therefrom. A report has recently been issued as to the 
commercial prospects of the experiments, and the Local Govern- 
ment is now considering what offers should be made to induce 
private enterprise to take up this manufacture. The bamboo 
tracts abounding in Burma contain great possibilities as to 
higher-priced pulp for the finer kinds of note-paper. Twenty-five 
years ago I had much correspondence with the late Mr Thomas 
Routledge, of Claxheugh, on this matter, and he prepared ex- 
cellent paper from bamboos which I sent to him. In quality he 
ranked these bamboos above esparto grass for paper-making. 
In 1882 or 1883 he obtained a concession for this purpose, but 
died before the company’s work could be commenced. But the 
bamboo tracts are still there, awaiting exploitation by capitalists. 
And it is not in Burma only, where 75 per cent. of the whole 
province is under forest of one sort or another, but throughout 
the whole of India, whose total extent of eleven hundred thousand 
square miles is covered with State forests (partly reserved, partly 
unclassed and unprotected) to the extent of nearly one-fourth, 
that forest produce is largely available for extraction—if only 
profitable markets can be found for it. At present there is a 
great wealth of fine, hard, beautifully-coloured and beautifully- 
grained wood, which, together with vast quantities of miscel- 
laneous raw produce of one sort or another, are practically 
nothing more than waste products of the woodlands. 
Efforts more or less successful are continuously being made 
to find remunerative markets for these timber-trees and other 
products. But it is more difficult to find a profitable market for 
any unknown kind of wood than for almost any other kind of 
raw product; and even though the Forest administration in India 
is officially classified as a “ gwas/-commercial department,” its 
efforts in a mercantile direction are, of course, not permitted to 
have the freedom exercised by private merchants. Still, this 
matter is not being lost sight of; and the yield of the Indian 
forests may hereafter be expected to increase largely, both in 
volume and in money-value. 
