ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF FOEESTS IN INDIA. 99 



tion of the forest, cause the timber to grow up hollow and unsound, 

 hut they also impair the productiveness of the soil, and retard the 

 rate of growth of the trees. In Burma the fires are principally caused 

 by the practice of toungya cultivation. The forest, instead of being 

 converted into permanent fields, is cut clown in January; and in 

 March or April, when the large mass of stems, branches, and bam- 

 boos, which cover the ground, have become sufficiently dry, it is 

 burned. On the first rainfall, rice, cotton, and vegetables are sown, 

 and yield an abundant harvest, no ploughing and digging, only weed- 

 ing and reaping being necessary. In some cases a second crop is 

 taken; but after that, and more often after the first crop, the field is 

 abandoned, a fresh piece of forest is selected for burning, and in this 

 manner destruction spreads rapidly over large areas. Some of the 

 finest teak forests in British Burma have been destroyed by these 

 clearings; and, with the steady increase of population under British 

 rule, the injury clone by this erratic kind of husbandry has become 

 enormous. This mode of wandering cultivation is practised through- 

 out the wilder parts of India; in Mysore, where it is known under 

 the name of kumri, it was possible, about twenty years ago, to pro- 

 tect the forests by stopping this practice throughout the country. 

 This result was mainly due to the exertions of Dr Cleghorn, for 

 many years Conservator of Forests in the Madras Presidency, and 

 afterwards employed by the Government of India in the organisa- 

 tion of forest administration in the provinces of Northern India. In 

 Burma, such a summary course of procedure was not found practi- 

 cable, and instead of protecting the whole of the forests, all that 

 could be done was to prohibit toungya clearings in a limited extent 

 of the best teak-producing tracts, and in those localities which were 

 set apart for the formation of new teak forests by planting. The 

 selection and demarcation of these tracts, which will eventually be 

 the State forests in that province, has not progressed rapidly, and 

 these reserved forests in Burma do not yet amount to more than 

 about 80,000 acres, 1600 acres of which have been covered with teak 

 plantations. 



Besides the dry, deciduous teak-producing tracts, there are in 

 the moister parts of the lower hills of Burma extensive and most 

 luxuriant evergreen forests, composed of a large variety of trees, 

 often 200 feet high and more, and so dense that except on the 

 numerous paths trodden by wild elephants, or on the scanty foot- 

 paths which lead from village to village, it is almost impossible to 

 penetrate through them. The forester classifies trees with special 



