34 SANDALWOOD PLANTATIONS. 



or they split up in the 'dry winds, and much damage is 

 caused. 



Natural Sandal. The tree is generally found in clumps of evergreen bushes 

 and hedges at an elevation of from two to four thousand feet 

 above the sea. The climate is what may be called rather 

 dry, rainfall from thirty to fifty inches. Birds are very 

 fond of the fruit which is something like a small purple 

 grape, with a hard seed about the size of a pea. The birds 

 carry the seed to hedges and trees and having eaten the 

 pulp, drop the kernel which readily springs up under the 

 shade of bushes or hedges this has given rise to the native 

 idea that to gernminate seed, it required to be passed 

 through a bird ! 



Fires are very destructive to young Sandal trees, indeed 

 they rarely survive them. There is a strip of dry forest from 

 Guzulhutti in the south, to near Hasinoor in the north, ele- 

 vated about one thousand feet above the Mysore plain, mea- 

 suring nearly one hundred square miles where hardly a San- 

 dal tree is to be found. The cause is the want of clumps of 

 evergreen bushes and perpetual fires. In this strip Sholigurs 

 fire the jungle to find deers' horns, to pick up myrobolans, 

 and for pasture, though this jungle is surrounded by jungles 

 bearing Sandalwood, I have never seen but one clump of 

 evergreen bushes in which were Sandal trees. The cattle 

 also were insufficient to keep down the grass, so that fires 

 were a certainty. 



Extension of na- The best plan of extending natural sandal jungles is first 



tural Sandal by re- 

 serves, and crow- to fence them to keep on cattle and deer, a ditch three feet 



wide at top, six inches at bottom, the loose earth thrown up 

 on the inside, on the top of this the Mysore thorn should be 

 j (hinted. A piece not less than four square miles should be 

 enclosed, and a regular establishment kept up. Lu the first 

 showers crow-bar holes should bo made in the clumps ut 

 evergreen bushes, and from the nursery, germinated seeds 



