ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF FORESTS IN INDIA. 101 



risk of fire. Worst of all are the climbing plants with which the 

 teak, sal, and other forests in all moist tracts abound. Huge 

 creepers, like gigantic ropes, often as thick as a man's thigh, and 

 thicker, stretch from the ground to the top of the trees : they give off 

 numberless branches, and their foliage completely covers and smothers 

 the crown of the tree of which they have taken possession. When 

 a young tree is attacked by one of these gigantic climbers, the stem 

 remains short, gets crooked and deformed, and makes no progress in 

 growth. In Burma several kinds of epiphytic Ficus attack teak 

 and other trees ; the seed germinates in a fork or in a hollow of the 

 trunk, sends down its roots, which eventually enclose the stem as 

 with a network. At last the tree dies, and the Ficus spreads its 

 massive but useless limbs in all directions. In the sal forests of Oudh 

 the creepers were particularly heavy and numerous when these tracts 

 came into our hands. Owing to several favourable circumstances, 

 it was possible in that province at once to set apart and demarcate 

 a large area of forest land as State forests, and the work of cutting 

 the creepers was at once taken in hand and completed at a consider- 

 able outlay ; so that now these forests are almost entirely cleared of 

 large climbers, and the young sal has a chance of growing up 

 straight, and forming valuable timber. 



Much smaller in area than the north-eastern moist region is that 

 which extends along the western coast of the Peninsula. It begins 

 north of Bombay, and, guided rather by the character of the vegeta- 

 tion than by meteorological observations, which in those wild tracts 

 Ave do not possess, I have included in it the northern Dangs, a dense 

 and most feverish forest district at the foot of the Khandeish ghats. 

 The eastern limit of this western moist zone runs nearly parallel 

 with the crest of the ghats, but at a short distance from the ghat line. 

 The moist zone thus includes the edge of the ghats, their western 

 slope, and the hilly country between the ghats and the coast line. 

 Its width varies from 50 to 100 miles. Surat, with 47 inches of 

 rain, is outside ; Bombay, which is included, has a fall of 72 inches 

 only, but Tanna, a few miles inland, has 102. Further down the 

 coast, the rainfall is heavier, liutnagerri has 115 inches, Vingorla 

 118, and Cananore 123. But the heaviest fall in this zone is on the 

 crest of the ghats. Here, as on the outer ranges of the Himalaya, 

 and the Ivhasia hills, the moist currents of air coming from the 

 west, which strike against the steep face of the ghats, are forced 

 upwards into a cooler and more rarified air, and the consecpuence is an 

 extremely heavy downpour during the monsoon. Thus the Sana- 



