26 4 



THE INDIAN TEAK TREE. 



Among these deciduous trees, the Indian Teak (Tectona 

 Grandis] stands pre-eminent, both from its value in 

 a commercial point of view, and also for its splendid 

 proportions and beautiful foliage. In Central India 

 these trees attain a girth of from ten to fifteen 

 feet, with a stem of seventy or eighty feet to the 

 lowest branches. * In the forest covered hills, even 

 so far south as Central India, Captain Forsyth reports 

 that not only the teak, but almost all the trees of 

 these forests are deciduous : the Sal tree (Shorea 

 Robustd) being about the only considerable exception 

 to this rule this latter being, according to the high 

 authority of Captain Forsyth, " almost the only ever- 

 green forest tree in India." f We make particular 

 note of this in order to call attention to the fact 

 that the onset of the dry season, and the intense 

 power of the tropical sun in these climates, exer- 

 cise the same effect in producing the fall of the 

 leaf as the frosts of winter at home. The great sim- 

 ilarity between the effects of intense dry heat and 

 intense frost, are in this, as in many other respects, 

 exceedingly remarkable. These points of resemblance 

 will be more fully considered in our Arctic section; but 

 as regards the effects of great solar heat, we shall merely 

 mention here that one of our leading authorities states 

 that " on the east coast of India, the vegetation is 

 interrupted for a longer period by the dry season, than 

 in Europe by the winter. " On the other hand some 

 few equatorial evergreen plants, when transported into 



* The Highlands of Central India, by Captain James Forsyth, 

 Bengal Staff Corps, and Indian Forest Department Service, reprint of 

 1889, p. 213. f Ibid., p. 371. 



The Cyclopedia of India, by Surgeon-General Edward Balfour, 

 3rd edit, 1885, Vol. i, p. 1246. 



