MANAGEMENT OF TEAK FORESTS. 



utterly destroyed ; the truth being that both soil and climate 

 were incapable of producing good Teak, and at the best 

 stunted specimens grew there which never contained five 

 cubic feet of marketable timber, a notable example maybe 

 found in the Hills near Cuddapah, and Mr. E. C. Thomas, 

 c. s., in his work " Famine" alludes to the Teak trees there 

 as once a fine forest and cites the size of the leaves on the 

 shoots as a criterion of the magnitude of the trees. There 

 is another example, near Musnacoil at the foot of the Segoor 

 Ghat, hundreds of Teak trees are seen bordering the road 

 with leaves as large as the finest trees have in a good forest, 

 and yet those trees have never produced, and never will 

 produce five cubic feet of good timber. Yet ten miles west 

 as the crow flies, fine Teak will be found, so great, an altera- 

 tion of climate does ten miles produce in this locality 

 whereas ten miles further west in the Cuddapah jungles 

 would produce no change whatsoever. We will suppose Teak plantation, 

 that in your forest of one to two hundred square miles, you 

 have plenty of blank spaces to fill in, some you devote to 

 the planting of germinated seed, but in more favorable 

 localities such as when there is good soil, easy carriage by 

 road or water, a scarcity of Teak, you determine upon a 

 regular plantation of at least five hundred acres to be 

 planted at the rate of twenty acres a year ; this will meet 

 the loss of the fifty thousand cubic feet taken out annually, 

 by this process, in a few years, you have provided for a 

 demand in future years much in excess of present require- 

 ments. As a Teak tree in fair localities may be supposed to 

 make a cubic foot a year, at the end of thirty years your 

 acre will represent two hundred trees containing at least 

 six thousand cubic feet of good timber, half of these are cut 

 out representing three thousand cubic feet. The remaining 

 hundred may be left to stand for another thirty years, by 

 which time they will average sixty cubic feet each or six 

 thousand cubic feet in all. These nine thousand cubic feet 

 should represent at least 9,000 rupees. In addition to this, 

 I allow nothing for the trees taken out between twelve and 

 thirty years of age though as poles it would be found that 



