86 SYLVICULTURE IN THE TROPICS 



l'T. I 



correspondence in the Indian Forester, chiefly on the 

 effect of fire-protection in the teak forests of Burma. 

 It has been maintained, with a good deal of evidence to 

 support this assertion, that, in the non-protected forests, 

 the number of seedlings of teak is much larger than in 

 the protected areas, and that saplings and poles maintain 

 themselves also better in these areas than in the pro- 

 tected forests. In order to support this, enumerations 

 of teak trees were carried out both in protected and in 

 non-protected areas, over places where enumerations 

 had been made some twenty or more years before, and 

 these enumerations indicated an increase of saplings and 

 poles in the unprotected areas, and a decrease in those 

 which had been protected. The reasons advanced for 

 the gradual decrease of the teak trees in protected forests 

 are : (i.) that the seed falls on a thick layer of dry leaves 

 which keep it from the soil, and the rootlet from pene- 

 trating into the latter, and that in the following year 

 those seedlings which have managed to germinate are 

 covered up by another layer of leaves which suppress 

 them; (ii.) that fire-protection favours the development 

 and spread of other species, more shade-enduring than 

 teak, which usurped its place and gradually ousted it, 

 the most formidable invader being bamboos, especially 

 Bambusa polymorpha and Cephalostachyum per- 

 gracile, especially the former, which grows to a larger 

 size, only seeds and dies down once every fifty years or 

 so, and suppresses all shade-avoiding species which it 

 overtops. 1 



It is also maintained that the fires in these forests 

 are mere ground fires, that they kill small seedlings 

 only down to the ground, and that these are soon able 

 to send out new coppice-shoots, and that with saplings, 

 poles, and trees, excepting perhaps those on the decline, 

 the damage done by these fires is so small that it is 

 covered many times over by the cost of fire-protection. 



1 Since writing the above, I have seen a forest officer who informed me that 

 in some teak forests of Upper Burma which he had administered, fire-protection 

 had changed the character of the forest ; it had become evergreen, naturally fire 

 protected, but teak had ceased to reproduce itself. 



