16 



MANAGEMENT OF TEAK FORESTS. 



Main Roads 



Carting. 



avoid passing over the bridges. lu the hot weather, your 

 bridges must be protected from fire. In fact what with 

 floods floating away your bridge beams, wild elephants 

 pulling them down, and fire getting in, bridges perpetually 

 require repair; fortunately, in most of all the forests, kura 

 murra is plentiful and makes splendid bridges up to twenty- 

 five feet span. If the stone abutments are fairly well built, 

 they should last a long time. 



Forest roads are only meant for carting over in the dry 

 weather, so the carting should all be done in about six mouths. 



It will be advisable to have your own carts for work iu 

 the forest. The wheels and axles should be extra strong, 

 capable of carrying three tons, as the jars to which the axles 

 are subjected in rough forest roads is very considerable. It 

 is a good plan to have the wheels and axles made up in a 

 large town. The poles can be got in the forest, they are 

 made of kura murra. The beams are slung under the pole, 

 and axle beam by means of chains, the weight being very 

 low down within two feet of the ground, upsets are not 

 common, four bullocks will take a ton of timber over rough 

 forest roads with ease. It is always advisable to keep 

 your roads in as good order as possible ; a few hundreds of 

 rupees carefully laid out in repair is a good investment. 

 Mode of dragging. In dragging timber, I am entirely in favor of harness. It 

 is true that sometimes, from the Mahout, not looking to the 

 stuffing of the collar, a swelling is caused in the point of 

 the shoulder which requires to be opened, and the animal 

 may be laid up for a month or more, but it is invariably the 

 fault of the Mahout. The swelling chiefly occurs in ele- 

 phants new to the work. 



On the Anamallies the elephant drags by the teeth, so 

 they do in many parts of Malabar. It is a most pernicious 

 practice, because it loosens the teeth, and an elephant's 

 grinders once out of order, he has to be laid up for a long 

 time before he recovers. I am jiwa.ro that the elephants do 

 not entirely depend on their teeth, but assist themselves by 

 means of their trunks, still they cannot always avoid heavy 

 jars. 



