TECTONA 743 



in the matter of restocking abandoned cultivation with crops of teak, and 

 deserves further trial. 



A successful experiment in broadcast sowing was carried out in 1896 near 

 Pinmadi in the Mohnyin reserve of the Katha district, Upper Burma. A patch 

 of teak forest was heavily girdled, and the area was burnt and sown broadcast 

 with teak seed. In the following year blanks were recleared and sown, the 

 cover was thinned out, and the area was extended to 7-7 acres. The plantation 

 was thinned in 1906, and in 1910 was reported to be well stocked with straight 

 poles. 



Broadcasting on ploughed land is said to have given good results in some 

 cases in the Satara district of Bombay, 



Dibbling. Under the head of ' dibbling ' may be comprised operations 

 for introducing teak or increasing its proportion over a given area by placing 

 seed in the ground, not over continuous cleared areas of some extent as in 

 the case of ordinary sowing, but in scattered gaps or comparatively small 

 clearings within the forest. The dibbling of teak seed in the forest has been 

 carried out for many years in various jDarts of Burma, but there has been very 

 little to show for all the time, labour, and money spent on the work. Evident 

 causes of failure in many cases are the fact that the dibblings have been carried 

 out under cover of a forest canopy, that the seed has been buried too deep, or 

 that it has been put into the ground too late in the season. If there is to be 

 a reasonable chance of success dibbling should be carried out in open gaps 

 or clearings, while the seed should be put into the ground before the com- 

 mencement of the early showers preceding the monsoon, and should be very 

 lightly covered. Even so, the success of the work depends on subsequent 

 regular weedings, and here the trouble and expense of establishing crops of 

 teak on any scale by this method at once becomes apparent, for however 

 carefully the patches of dibbled seed may be marked they are often difficult 

 to find subsequently, and the time occupied in searching for and weeding each 

 individual patch of seedlings, should germination prove successful, in the great 

 majority of cases renders the expense of this work quite out of proportion to 

 the results attained. Moreover, the seedlings resulting from dibblings in the 

 forest seldom show the vigour and rapid growth of those raised in taungya 

 plantations, where the working of the soil and its enrichment with ashes 

 greatly stimulate growth, and in consequence seedlings raised in forest dibblings 

 take longer to outgrow weeds and are therefore subject to suppression for a 

 longer time. Again, those plants which survive the first few years in small 

 gaps in the forest require constant attention subsequently, for unless the canojjj' 

 is kept open, bamboo and other growth being cleared, these plants must 

 inevitably become suppressed. 



In a moist climate Hke that of Burma, dibblings of this kind cannot be 

 justified except for the purpose of increasing the quantity of reproduction over 

 definite areas where concentrated regeneration is in progress, and where the 

 intention is to remove the overhead canopy within a comparatively short 

 time ; in such cases weedings would be carried out systematically over the 

 whole area, and the time occupied in searching for and weeding isolated 

 patches would be saved. Experiments in Pyinmana have shown that dibblings 

 have succeeded better in forest annually burnt over than in fire-protected 



