ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF FORESTS IN INDIA. 93 



but in the majority of cases they arise from the temporary clearings 

 made by cutting and burning, and the custom of the herdsmen to 

 burn down the old grass in order to cause the fresh tender shoots to 

 spring up as fodder for their cattle. It is true that these fires clear 

 the ground, and make walking through the forest easier; and, up to 

 the present time, many otherwise observant people in India have 

 been of opinion that these fires are not mischievous, and might in 

 some cases be beneficial. The damage, however, done by them defies 

 calculation. Millions of seeds and seedlings are destroyed, trees of 

 all ages are injured, and often killed, the bark is scorched and burnt, 

 the wood exposed to the air, dry rot sets in, and the tree gets hollow 

 and useless for timber. One of the most remarkable facts in the 

 working of the Indian forests in the plains and lower hills has been 

 the large proportion of hollow and unsound trees. In many forests 

 one-half, in others three-fourths of the mature trees are hollow. To a 

 certain extent this is due to the old age of the timber felled ; but 

 experience elsewhere proves that old age can only account for a 

 small proportion of the hollow and unsound trees. The annual 

 jungle-fires are the principal cause of this mischief. In this respect 

 all deciduous forests in India suffer alike, "With regard to repro- 

 duction, that is, the growth of seedlings, some trees are better off in 

 this respect than others. Thus the Sal trees ripens its seed about the 

 commencement of the rains, after the jungle-fires have passed through 

 the forest. The young plants thus germinate at once in great abun- 

 dance. The jungle-fires of the coming season kill a good many, and 

 cause a large proportion of the others to grow hollow ; but in the 

 dense mass of seedlings which clothes the ground under the parent 

 trees in a sal forest, the damage done is comparatively small. This, 

 to a certain extent, explains how the sal forests are nearly pure, the 

 stronger tree in the matter of reproduction predominating over all 

 the rest. The Teak, on the other hand, ripens its seed early in the 

 dry season, the jungle-fires consume large quantities of it; a smaller 

 proportion of seedlings spring up, and these are either killed or cut 

 down to the root year after year by the fires. Meanwhile, the root- 

 stock increases in size every year by the action of the shoots, which 

 come up during the rains, and at last, often after the lapse of many 

 years, it produces a shoot strong enough to outlive the fires. Thus 

 what appears a seedling plant of teak is in most cases really a coppice 

 shoot from a thick gnarled root-stock, bearing the scars of succes- 

 sive generations of shoots, which were burned down by the annual 

 fires. 



