218 REPORT ON THE FORESTS OF INDIA. 



Ridiculously small as this proportion may seem, it must be 

 borne in mind that not only is a large proportion of even this 

 area in the mountains or other remote regions, whence only 

 the most valuable timber can be sent to market, but that its 

 condition as to standing stock is anything but what might be 

 desired. 



The principal timbers of India are the Deodar of the Himalaya; 

 the Sal, extending over a considerable area in the North-West Pro- 

 vinces, Oudh, the Central Provinces, Bengal, Assam, etc. ; and the 

 Teak, the principal habitat of which is Burmah. The first is 

 found in pure forests; the second also commonly exists as pure 

 forests, or the sal is the preponderating tree; but pure forests of 

 teak are unknown. Under native rule the sources of supply of 

 the first and last of these were scarcely tapped, except for local 

 requirements, and that to only a trifling extent ; but long before 

 the advent of the Forest Department, all these classes had been 

 heavily drafted on for public works. There was no suspicion of 

 the extent to which even, in those days, the forests were being 

 overworked, the general verdict of the forest officers in respect to 

 them all being " supply unlimited," but a few years' active opera- 

 tions sufficed to show that this verdict was based on very imper- 

 fect data. The Himalaya were supposed to be covered with 

 deodar everywhere, between five thousand and ten thousand feet 

 high ; but as these forests became better known, it was found that 

 they existed in narrow strips or circumscribed areas only, and it is 

 not too much to say now that, but for the supplies drawn from 

 native states, there would not be a mature deodar tree left standing 

 in the Punjab Himalaya. 



In the North-West Provinces, the only other source of supply of 

 this valuable timber, the present rate of exportation will, I think, 

 result in the withdrawal of every mature tree, from both British 

 and native territory, within another twenty years; and this is 

 a tree which is estimated to require two hundred years to reach 

 maturity. 



In the sal forests the ground is irregularly stocked; large areas 

 are covered with trees decayed or passing to decay; large areas of 

 close forests, cleared at a stroke, without any reference to natural 

 reproduction, have been replaced by grass; and clearances effected 

 in more open forests, the whole floor of which was covered with 

 seedlings, get burnt over year after year, until the coarse long 

 grasses of the country creep in and acquire the supremacy; and 



