MANAGEMENT OF TEAK FORESTS. 



and some 5,000 acres still to plant up, there is work cut 

 out here for many a day. 



I had since I860 been more or less connected with these Nellumbore Teak 

 splendid plantations until I retired from the service in 1874, 

 when working the Mudumalli Forest for the Wellington 

 Barracks which I was engaged in building, I had occasion 

 in 1857 to visit the Rajah of Nellumbore about forest 

 matters, and first saw the Teak plantations then about 

 thirteen years old in 1860,1 visited them officially and 

 found that the 1845 plantation had never been thinned, and Management, 

 required to be operated upon at once. The 1843 and 44? 

 plantations had been thinned more by failures than by the 

 hand of man they were poor and of no extent; but the 1845 

 was a very fine one, and the old Overseer Chatoo Menon 

 could not bring himself to cut out the trees. I had to Thiuniug. 

 mark the trees myself and followed by half a dozen axe- 

 men, in a week we had made a considerable gap, and the 

 ice once broken, the old man went on thinning out under 

 the auspices of Overseer Hall whom I sent down to assist 

 him. This 1845 block should have been thinned three 

 years before, the trees were crowding each other and 

 making no progress. 



In 1860 I was enabled to appoint Mr. Ferguson to the 

 charge of these important plantations, and Chatoo Menon Chatoo Menon. 

 retired on a pension which he had well earned. Here I 

 must record how faithfully and how well this native had 

 served the Government ; connected with the Nellumbore 

 Rajah's family, he had position, and being immediately 

 under the orders of the Collector, he, of course, derived con- 

 siderable support from the Revenue authorities. From 

 1843 to 1860 Chatoo Menon had been incessantly engaged 

 in planting, and had put out about a million of Teak plants 

 on 1,200 acres. Mr. Ferguson, a practical Forester, soon Mr. Ferguson, 

 mastered the details of planting and pruning, and when I 1845 trees. 

 saw the 1845 plantation in 1872, the trees were about seventy 

 feet high and fifty feet without a branch, they were then 

 nearly thirty years old, and had then over fifty cubic feet of 



