DESTRUCTIVE PRACTICES 157 



It will be of interest to contrast the above method 

 of collecting and dealing with the seed with that in 

 force in the wild border land of North Baluchistan, 

 Afghanistan, and the frontier to the west. The seed 

 is collected by the tribesmen of these parts, who 

 regard it as a right, and in fact consider the forests to 

 be their own property. They fully recognise the 

 value of refraining from felHng the trees, except when 

 absolutely required to obtain timber for building 

 purposes, etc., but their regard for the trees goes no 

 farther. The forest has an extremely ragged appear- 

 ance, and this is in part due to the methods of collec- 

 tion, this work being carried out in the summer time. 

 To obtain the seed, men cHmb the trees, and by 

 means of long poles to the end of which a hook is 

 affixed, they wrench from the boughs the seed-bearing 

 cones. The wrench invariably breaks a portion of 

 the branch, with the result that a tree from which 

 the cones have been recently stripped bleeds from 

 numerous places, and is in a condition most sus- 

 ceptible to attack by insect and fungus pests. The 

 attention of a PoHtical Officer of these regions 

 was drawn to the fact that, owing to the greed of 

 the tribesmen, in addition to the injury done to 

 the trees scarcely a cone was left upon them 

 to produce seed for the natural regeneration of the 

 forests, i.e. the production of a new crop of trees. 

 This must be an equally vital point in the parts of 

 the Western Asiatic forests which are subject to the 

 collection of the seed of the cembran pine. In the 

 case of the chilgoza pine the cones after collection are 

 gathered together in heaps, and the heaps fired whilst 



