26 PRACTICAL FOREST MANAGEMENT. 



at a time when earth movements were gradually increasing 

 the slope and velocity of the upper reaches of the rivers (and 

 thus enabling them to deposit boulder beds where they once 

 deposited sands), these same earth movements finally caught up 

 these river deposits and ridged them up into the ultimate foot 

 hills. The sandrock areas are now clothed with a poor III and 

 IV quality sal forest, patchy and open, with a large admixture of 

 sain, bakli and Jchair, while a high percentage of chir is found on 

 the conglomerates. The sandrock of the Saharanpur Siwaliks 

 is characterized by a profuse growth of chir pine which under fire 

 protection is spreading rapidly over these denuded areas. The 

 sal forest on this tertiary formation varies according to the mois- 

 ture content of the locality from good quality to scrub, indeed the 

 sal is entirely absent from large areas of the hills, its place being 

 taken by zerophytic species, Bhabar grass and bamboo. A detailed 

 description of the geology and vegetation of the Saharanpur 

 Siwaliks will be found in Benskin's working plan for that division. 

 3. The Bhabar. The " Bhabar " is the term applied to the 

 waterless tract of country at the foot of the hills where the rivers 

 have deposited their loads of boulders, gravels and silt, and 

 formed great cones of detritus. It is characterized by a porous 

 gravelly soil, with boulder deposits sometimes of enormous depth, 

 e.g., the depth of boulder strata at Haldwani deposited by the 

 G-aula river runs to hundreds of feet and the boulder deposits 

 of the small Nihal stream are over 1,000 feet deep. But the admi- 

 nistrative boundary between the Bhabar and the Tarai bears very 

 small relation to the true geological boundary, the former is a 

 convenient straight line, the latter a series of sinuosities, bulging 

 out perhaps 10 or 15 miles at the mouth of a river, then curving 

 in almost, to touch the foot of the hills where no river has 

 deposited. It varies in width from one to fifteen miles, and 

 although the whole is classified geologically as recent, there are 

 distinct plateaus or river terraces of different ages, each with its 

 characteristic type of forest. 



