THE NERBUDDA 285 



reaching 25 and 30 feet the second season, straight stalks 

 with half a dozen leaves on top. 



If fires are excluded for a few years these seedlings will 

 rapidly become secure from injury. In the Madras 

 Presidency at Nilambur there is a plantation of teak, made 

 by an enthusiastic lover of forests — Mr. Connolly — in 

 1844 to 1857, riow of 3,500 acres. According to state- 

 ments of Colonel Beddome, Conservator of that district 

 in 1885, some of the trees then measured 8 feet in girth 

 and no feet high, being straight and yielding good timber. 

 The trees, planted 1,000 to the acre, would be eventually 

 thinned out to about seventy trees to the acre, of 200 to 

 240 cubic feet each at sixty years old. This is a surprising 

 growth, considering that oak takes 250 years probably to 

 attain the same size. The same authority stated that 

 in the sapling stage of their first ten years teak-trees put 

 on I to 2 cubic feet annually, and grow chiefly in height, 

 with single stems, but that their growth is then much 

 accelerated, each tree putting on from 5 cubic feet a year — 

 growing, in fact, four times as fast as oak. In view of the 

 fact that the yearly export from Burmah to England, 

 which averaged for many years half a million in value, 

 has been on the decline, owing to the large timber becom- 

 ing exhausted, the importance of conserving the teak 

 forests and replanting becomes apparent. An experi- 

 ment of planting teak in a forest reserve called Banka 

 Burda, in the Satpura hills, was in progress ; but it seemed 

 that a wrong place had been selected, too far from carriage. 

 It is now abandoned. If Government plantations had 

 been made on a large scale on Mr, Connolly's system, 

 what a splendid property would now exist ! 



We will proceed to explore these extensive jungles. 

 The road is but a cattle track winding along the bottom of 

 a rocky vaUey ; on each side rise moderately steep ridges, 



