( 75 ) 



people the blessings of a more rational agriculture ; for I believe that the various topics which 

 even the simplest culture involves are more suitable for the advancement of civilization amongst 

 the people, than instruction in mathematics, geography, and the like. 



The want of cattle amongst these people, and the difficulty of keeping them in these hills, 

 is also a serious obstacle, but it will be overcome as settled cultivation progresses. 



After this short digression, I shall attempt to show how good might be derived from evil, 

 and how such deserted toungyas might be utilized for forest purposes. The right of cutting 

 toungyas in forest districts is, I suppose, subject to the permission of the forest officer of the 

 district. Hence if the conditions for a subsequent occupation of the ground were favorable 

 for the raising of timber plantations, they would readily, it is believed, be accepted by the 

 parties interested, and a good deal of expense in felling trees and preparing the ground for 

 a plantation would be saved. Such toungyas would be only suitable for leafshedders but 

 not (iu the greater number of cases) for evergreens. It has been ascertained that teak does 

 not spring up very freely in toungyas, and it is supposed therefore that toungyas are not 

 generally favoura,i)le for the dissemination of teak.* The causes of this are apparently the 

 following : 



(1.) Karens usually avoid cutting toungyas in localities, where bamboo fruits or begins 

 to fiTiit, for they know very well that rats would be attracted and would destroy their crops. 



(2.) As a consequence of this, coarse grasses, etc., spring up instead of bamboo seed- 

 lings, necessarily suppressing, to a greater or lesser degree, the growth of teak and other 

 trees. 



(3.) Toungyas are not allowed to be cut in localities where teak is abundant, and there- 

 fore the supply of seed that is carried to them by winds after they are deserted is necessa- 

 rily small or only nominal, f 



On the other hand, we know of teak : 



(1.) That its seedlings come up freely where bamboos have flowered and died off. 



(2.) That teak attains its greatest perfection in size and growth where Tinwa and 

 Kyattounwa are largest. In fact the growth of these two bamboos may be considered an in- 

 fallible criterion for the growth and size, not only of teak, but also of many other leafshed- 

 ding trees, which elongate their stems in proportion to the average height of these bamboos. 



(3.) That teak and other leafshedders, without bamboo undergrowth, remain small sized 

 with short stems, and, if grown on deep alluvium or on impermeable substrata, often become 

 deformed. 



From the above facts, we may, with a certain degree of probability, conclude, that the 

 present system of planting teakj in Pegu is not in conformity with the natural require- 

 ments of the tree, and will by no means realize the expectations which foresters may enter- 

 tain. No one can predict from the growth of young trees wliat their future size and shape 

 will be, until the rapid upward-growth becomes arrested and the engrossing of the stem com- 

 mences. Facts in nature also point forcibly against the establishment of pure teak-plan- 

 tations, and shew that although teak may be grown thus, the trees do not attain the perfection 

 to which they are capable under a natural process. To this may also be added the fact that 

 some of these plantations (now abandoned, if I am correctly informed) are laid out on late- 

 rite, calcareous sandstone, deep alluvium, etc., which are all naturally unfavourable to the good 

 growth of the tree. The future results of such a culture will be clearly seen in the patch of 

 pure teak forest of the Myitmaka choung West of Poungday (Prome), or in those pure teak- 

 forests to which I alluded in my journals of the 6th and 9th February, 1871. 



Tropical leafshedders, at least by far the greater part of them, are pre-eminently unsocial 

 in excessive tropical regions, and competition with other trees improves their growth. This 

 latter fact is well known to foresters in Europe with regard to leafed forests, and they plant, 

 therefore, oaks and beeches together, because they know that the growth of the former will 

 improve by competition with the latter. This phenomenon simply rests upon the different 

 light-loving propensities of the trees themselves, which compels the one either to push his 

 head above his neighbour, or to succumb or perish altogether. 



The practicell of planting trees close together, so as to cause the early clearing of the 



_ Capt. W. J. Seaton states in one of his reports, that it was an erroneous view that toungya cultivation 

 facilitates the reproduction of teak. 



t To this may be added the fact, that, as a rule, only a few of the numerous seeds which a tree produces 

 yearly germinate (some say only one in a hundred), owing to the struggle for existence that is ever going on in 

 nature. Hence the natural necessity there is in a practical point of view for removing, first, the cause of suppres- 

 sion, before the free development of the teak-seedlings can be looked for. 



t My remarks refer only to those teak plantations which I saw in 1868, and to the Prome plantation in 1871. 



Viz. in the fork of the confluence of the Ban-deo choung and Ye noe, and in a similar fork between the 

 Pjrit choung and a small feeder at Hsa-byeng. 



II Tropical leafshedders cannot be compared with temperate leafshedders and be treated accordingly, for the 

 latter follow quite distinct laws. Therefore tropical arboriculture must necessarily differ from European arbori- 

 Inlture, and even the arboriculture of excessive, and that of equable tropical climes, is based upon diiferent prin- 

 ciples. Excessive heat and icy winters must att'ect the growth of trees in a diliereut way, although the physio- 

 logical effects of both resemble one another remarkably. 



