HARDWICKIA 355 



forest reappeared almost as fast as it was destroyed. . . . The ground was never 

 completely cleared of forest ; numerous trees of seed-bearing age were left 

 scattered all round and over the fields. The seed fell from these trees on the 

 newly broken land, now at last also freed to a great extent of grass, and 

 the resulting seedlings came up under the most favourable condition for 

 survival. The subsequent cultivation of the soil, limited to a mere scratching 

 of the soil, left an appreciable proportion of the seedlings uninjured to continue 

 their development, and as the field was abandoned as soon as the soil showed 

 the first signs of exhaustion, the young plants were left in complete possession 

 of the ground. . . . During the seven years that I was able to continue my 

 observations before I was transferred to the United Provinces the seedlings 

 of pre-reservation days continued to strengthen themselves and develop, but 

 no new contingent of seedlings survived to swell their numbers. . . . The 

 seedlings are as usual produced in countless numbers after every periodic 

 gregarious seeding, but, being unable to push their taproots down deep enough, 

 they all perish in their very first year.' Again : ' There is no doubt whatsoever 

 that the death of the seedlings is due to their inability to force their long 

 slender taproot down deep enough through the matting of grass roots occupying 

 the soil everywhere to a depth of 1-2 ft.' 



We have already seen that Mr. Witt's experiments appear to disprove the 

 theory that the taproots of the seedlings are unable to force their way through 

 the roots of the grass, and to show that the mortality among the seedlings is 

 due to drought. At the same time, the observations of Mr, Fernandez indicate 

 that seedlings appearing on land which has been broken up for cultivation 

 and subsequently ' scratched ' for a few years have succeeded in establishing 

 themselves, whereas in the same locality seedhngs appearing on land which 

 has reverted to grass have failed to do so. This affords room for a strong 

 presumption that success in the former case was due to soil-aeration, and that 

 Mr. Fernandez was not very far v/rong in attributing failure in the latter case 

 to the grass roots, though the failure was probably due not so much to their 

 direct obstructive action as to the introduction of an unfavourable factor 

 possibly connected with deficient soil-aeration, caused, in part at least, by 

 the binding action of the roots. 



To quote further examples of establishment of reproduction on broken 

 soil, Shyam Sunder Lai ^ writes of conditions in Indore state : ' The natural 

 seed regeneration in the seeding year (which is generally every third year) is 

 so profuse, that many thousands of small seedlings per acre can be counted 

 in the forests. A large proportion of these, however, die from several causes, 

 but this kind of regeneration, on old sites of cultivation, has always been 

 noticed to thrive extraordinarily, and it is an object lesson to be remembered 

 that breaking up of land in the vicinity of anjan seed-bearers, either by means 

 of ploughs or otherwise, helps the young seedlings considerably and gives 

 much better results. . . . This has been tried in our forests with good results.' 



Mr. P. M. Lushington,2 referring to a remarkable plot of natural repro- 

 duction in the Malappakonda reserve, Anantapur district, which is known to 

 have come up within recent years near old seed-bearers on cultivated land 

 acquired at settlement, remarks : ' A lesson can I think be learned from this 



1 Ind. Forester, xxxvii (1911), p. 65. 2 inspection Note, 1913. 



C2 



