174 THE HIGHLANDS OF CENTEAL INDIA 



of wood alone — ^far more valuable, in fact, than larger 

 timber, which, is only useful for the exceptional class of 

 structures comprising the residences of wealthy persons, 

 European houses, and public edifices. It was thus, per- 

 haps, scarcely very surprising that when we suddenly 

 demanded from the forests a large and permanent supply 

 of large timber for our railway system, we found that they 

 could not afford it, though it by no means follows that the 

 forests were not in a useful state to meet the ordinary 

 requirements of the country. 



Our treatment of this question of the teak forests is 

 a good example of the difficulties in Indian administration 

 which arise from the absence of accurate information on 

 the real requirements of the country, and the obstacles 

 in the way of reconciling the conditions of a low and almost 

 stationary stage of society with nineteenth-century " pro- 

 gress " and high-pressure civilisation. In the cry for 

 great timbers for our railways we totally forgot, or neg- 

 lected, the demand of the masses of the population for 

 smaU timber for their houses and many other purposes. 

 We shut up every acre of the teak-producing country we 

 could, and referred them to inferior sorts of wood, all the 

 best species besides teak having been tabooed along with 

 it. The other species of timber, when used young, mostly 

 decay in a year or two in an Indian climate ; and so the 

 people were put to a vast unnecessary expenditure of 

 labour in renewals, while we strove, by pruning and pre- 

 serving, to make large timber grow out of the scrubby 

 coppice wood which had before supplied their wants; 

 and, as it proved, strove entirely in vain. . This pollarded 

 teak will not grow straight and large, prune we never so 

 wisely. It will grow well to a certaia size, the size the 

 natives require it, but after that it decays and twists into 

 every variety of tortuous shape. What we should have 

 done was to reserve the best forests for timber purposes 

 proper, and apply to the rest — ^the vastly greater part of 

 them — only such measures as would ensure the best and 

 quickest production of coppice wood for the requirements 

 of the people. It has been said that they should learn 

 to do as European nations do, convert large trees to smaller 



