CH. V 



MAN AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS 93 



the funds of the State, wish to be able to show a more 

 speedy return for funds invested. 



Another evil attendant on careless working of mixed 

 forests is the cutting out of the more valuable species. 

 These species are often represented in comparatively 

 small numbers in a forest crop ; and it is natural that, 

 unless checked, prospectors will pick them out, and thus 

 not only reduce the value of the standing crop, but 

 injure the prospects of natural regeneration. Much 

 damage has been done in this way to the teak forests 

 of Burma and Siam, to those of satinwood and ebony, 

 especially the latter, in Ceylon, and probably to the 

 mahogany, logwood, and lignum vitae forests in 

 South America, as also to the forests yielding gutta- 

 percha in the Malay Peninsula. The most valuable 

 cabinet wood of Ceylon, the Calamander or Coromandel 

 wood (Diospyros quaesita), is now practically as extinct 

 as the dodo, on account of the persistent persecutions 

 which it has suffered ; and another valuable cabinet 

 wood, the Nedun (Pericopsis Mooniana), is threatened 

 with a like fate. 



The above statement shows the principal ways in 

 which man shows himself an enemy of the forest, but he 

 declares his hostility to one of his best friends in various 

 other ways, such as by injury to trees while collecting 

 minor produce ; as, for example, in hacking at and 

 setting fire to trees, and often to the surrounding forest, 

 when gathering wild honey, by girdling and killing- 

 trees for their bark which he uses for tanning, in tapping 

 them for gum or resin, in mutilating them for their 

 leaves, which he may use for litter or manure or for 

 tanning, and in gathering forest fruits. He commits 

 numberless forest offences in preserved forests, and will 

 adopt any means to enlarge his cultivation at the 

 expense of the forest. As an illustration of this I may 

 quote a case which happened in the early days of the 

 Anglo-Egyptian administration of the Sudan, when the 

 neighbouring Arabs set fires on the stumps of all the 

 trees which had been cut in a coppice felling, and culti- 



