6 OUR FORESTS AND WOODLANDS 
the depths of the woods after delivering an un- 
successful attack, and in hampering his line of 
march by blocking the rough tracks with felled 
trees. The villages, or ‘towns’ as both Cesar 
and Strabo called them, were merely clusters of 
houses grouped together for mutual assistance 
and defence within large clearances made in the 
forest. "They were protected by ramp and ditch, 
as well as by a stout fence formed by inter- 
weaving branches of thorny trees and shrubs and 
strengthened with stakes. 
It is curious and interesting to note conditions 
as to tactics and village defence obtaining through- 
out Upper Burma quite recently almost exactly 
similar to those which prevailed in Britain about 
nineteen centuries ago. 
At that time the British woods consisted of 
Beech, Oak, Scots Pine, Birch, Ash, Scots Elm, 
Mountain Ash, Sallow, Aspen, Alder, and Yew, 
together with smaller trees and shrubs like Haw- 
thorn, Juniper, Holly, and Gorse. To the Romans 
we owe the English Elm, Lime, Chestnut, Plane, 
Poplar, Walnut, and many other trees of the 
garden and the orchard, which have never become 
thoroughly naturalised throughout the woodlands. 
