i62 



NATURE 



[November 28, 1912 



FOREST CULTIVATION IN TROPICAL 

 REGIONSA 



THE author of this book has done well to 

 restrict it to the sylviculture of tropical 

 forests instead of attempting the wide subject of 



distributed in all the zones, the most important 

 one for valuable forests being the " moist zone '' 

 (40-75 '"•). illustrated at p. 23 by a picture of a 

 Ceylon Mimusops forest. It is a pity that there is 

 no picture of a forest of the Indian teak. 



Perhaps the most interesting chap- 

 ter in the book, at any rate for the 

 forester, is chapter viii, which treats 

 of natural regeneration, and describes 

 the reproduction of forest by natural 

 means as distinct from artificial. 

 Works of planting and sowing are, it 

 is true, very fully described, but in 

 the vast areas which have to be 

 treated in most tropical regions it 

 must be on natural reproduction 

 chiefly that a forester has to depend 

 to ensure continuance of forest growth 

 and continued improvement instead of 

 deterioration. Mr. Broun describes 

 how most tropical forests which have 

 been taken under scientific manage- 

 ment have previously suffered during 

 centuries of ill-usage, so that every 

 effort has to be made to restore them 

 In what is called a "normal" con- 



forestry, of which, however, sylviculture is the 

 most important branch. His definition of sylvi- 

 culture is "the art of applying the knowledge of 

 the requirements of different trees, in tending and 

 regenerating existing woods, or in rearing fresh 

 woodland crops and in working them to the bc-i 

 advantage of the forest owner," so that it is tin 

 cultivation of forest crops in distinction to arbori- 

 culture, which is the culti\'ation of individual 

 trees. 



The personal experience which has fitted Mr. 

 Broun to write about tropical sylviculture has been 

 gained only in India, Ceylon and the Sudan, the 

 countries in which he has served as a Government 

 forest officer, and this has to be remembered, 

 because the kinds of forest of which he treats are 

 only to be found in those countries. In his preface, 

 however, he expresses the hope that what he has 

 written may not be found to disagree with the 

 experience in other tropical regions. It might 

 perhaps have been better to have called his book 

 "Tropical Sylviculture in India, Ceylon and the 

 Sudan," and so to have avoided the more 

 general but somewhat misleading name actually 

 adopted. 



The chapter on soil is a general one, but that 

 on climate applies strictly to the belt of the earth's 

 surface contained between the two tropics. In 

 this belt the zones of forest vegetation naturally 

 differ according to the greater or less dampness, 

 so that the five of which he treats vary from the 

 " desert zone," where the average annual rainfall 

 is under 4 in., to the "wet zone," where it is above 

 75 inches. The Sudan forests, a good idea of 

 some of which is given by the picture here repro- 

 duced, come chiefly into the arid zone (rainfall 

 4-16 in.), while those of India and Ceylon are 



"Kylv 



NO. 2 2^ 



■ By A. 

 , i9>2 ) Pr 



90] 



Pp. 



ii+3o9- 



dition, fit for regular systematic working tending 

 to the production of a permanent and regular 

 annual vield. 



