BULLET AND SHOT 



Unless the efforts of the Forest Department to 

 prevent fire should be successful (they necessarily 

 are sometimes the reverse, especially in the case of 

 the large forests on the frontier), the forests take 

 fire in the hot season, i.e. between February and 

 the end of April, when the ground is strewn with 

 the dry leaves of the now leafless trees, and when 

 the rank growth of grass has dried up to so high 

 a pitch of desiccation, that a spark falling upon 

 the ground, if fanned by a light air, will suffice 

 to set many square miles in a blaze. 



The reason why the efforts of the Forest Depart- 

 ment to ensure fire protection in these forests are 

 so often but partially successful, lies in the fact that 

 the forests are inhabited by a jungle tribe whose 

 services are quite invaluable to the department, 

 who perform all the work required by the latter, 

 and who alone can live, or find their way, in these 

 vast solitudes. The Forest Department can prevent 

 fires from spreading into its reserves from unpro- 

 tected forests of its own, or from Her Imperial 

 Majesty's forests across the frontier ; it can also 

 isolate the dwellings of the jungle tribes by clear 

 belts across which fire cannot pass ; but it cannot 

 prevent fire spreading from sparks dropped from 

 the torches of these jungle men, and carried by 

 them as a protection against wild beasts when they 

 move about after dark, nor from careless dropping 

 by them, in the daytime, of fire carried for the 

 purpose of lighting their tobacco which they smoke 

 from a green leaf twisted into a conical form. It 

 were the rankest heresy to question the advisability 



406 



