THE TEAK REGION. 203 



permanent supply of large timber for our railway system, we 

 found that they could not afford it, though it by no means 

 follows that the forests were not in a useful state to meet the 

 ordinary requirements of the country. 



Our treatment of this question of the teak forests is a good 

 example of the difficulties in Indian administration which 

 arise from the absence of accurate information on the real 

 requirements of the country, and the obstacles in the way of 

 reconciling the conditions of a low and almost stationary stage 

 of society with nineteenth-century " progress," and high-pres- 

 sure civilization. In the cry for great timber for our railways 

 we totally forgot, or neglected, the demand of the masses of 

 the population for small timber for their houses and many 

 other purposes. We shut up every acre of the teak-producing 

 country we could, and referred them to inferior sorts of wood, 

 all the best species besides teak having been tabooed along 

 with it. The other species of timber, when used young, 

 mostly decay in a year or two in an Indian climate ; and so 

 the people were put to a vast unnecessary expenditure of 

 labour in renewals, while we strove, by pruning and pre- 

 serving, to make large timber grow out of the scrubby 

 coppice wood which had before supplied their wants ; and, 

 as it proved, strove entirely in vain. This pollarded teak 

 will not grow straight and large, prune we never so wisely. 

 It will grow well to a certain size, the size the natives 

 require it, but after that it decays and twists into every 

 variety of tortuous shape. What we should have done was 

 to reserve the best forests for timber purposes proper, and 

 apply to the rest the vastly greater part of them only such 

 measures as would ensure the best and quickest production 

 of coppice wood for the requirements of the people. It has 

 been said that they should learn to do as European nations 



