386 India . 



woods clothe the foothills of the Himalayas and are 

 scattered in smaller bodies throughout the more humid 

 portions of the country, while the dry northwestern 

 territories are practically treeless wastes. Large areas 

 of densely settled districts are so completely void of 

 forest that millions of people regularly burn cow dung 

 as fuel, while equally large districts are still impene- 

 trable, wild woods, where, for want of market, it 

 hardly pays to cut even the best of timbers. 



The great mass of forests in India are stocked with 

 hardwoods, which in these tropical countries are 

 largely evergreen, or nearly so, although the large 

 areas of dry forest are deciduous by seasons; only a 

 small portion of the forest area is covered by conifers, 

 both pine and cedar, these pine forests being generally 

 restricted to higher altitudes in the Himalayas. The 

 hardwoods, most of which in India truly deserve this 

 name, belong to a great variety of plant families, some 

 of the most important being the Leguminosse, Ver- 

 benaceae, Dipterocarpeae, Combretaceae, Rubiaceae, 

 Ebenaceae, Euphorbiaceae, Myrtaceae, and others, and 

 a relatively small portion represented by Cupuliferae 

 and other families familiar to us. The most important, 

 valuable species are Teak, Sal, and Deodar. 



In the greater part of India the hardwood forest 

 consists not of a few species, as with us, but is made 

 up, like most tropical forest, of a great variety of trees 

 unlike in their habit, their growth, and their product; 

 and, if our hardwoods offer on this account consider- 

 able difficulties to profitable exploitation, the case 

 is far more complicated in India, several thousand 

 species entering into the composition. In addition 





