TEAK PLANTATIONS. 309 



seed previously to sowing it. This, he maintains, will not answer, 

 although the process does not injure the kernel ; for, he says, — 



" "When vegetation takes place, the seed hursts a piece out of 

 the side of the shell, and comes clear out of it ; it is there- 

 fore necessary that earth be in contact with the young root, so 

 that it is able to lay hold on it for nourishment. In the event 

 of its not being able to do this, and bring itself out of the shell, 

 it in the course of an incredibly short space of time turns of a 

 bluish colour, and perishes ; and therefore, if raised in a box, 

 or in heaps, it would perish as soon as germination had taken 

 place." Moreover, seeds in this state do not bear removal, 

 for they quickly perish on being accidentally exposed by care- 

 lessness in watering the beds in which they have been sown, 

 although immediately covered again with proper care. An- 

 other objection to the plan of stratifying arose from uncer- 

 tainty as to the time the seed took to vegetate. The tahsildar 

 and M. Perrottet allowed forty days for vegetation to be com- 

 pleted, but Mr Graham had known seeds to vegetate from the 

 eleventh day after sowing. On the question whether the outer 

 coating of the teak seed was essential or not to its germina- 

 tion, Mr Graham was of opinion that nature had provided it 

 to absorb moisture, and by engendering damp (not heat, as 

 Dr Wight said), it destroys the vitality of the seed ; otherwise, 

 argued Mr Graham, nearly every seed in the forest should 

 germinate, whereas only a very small number did vegetate, and 

 these, he asserted, were seeds which had been cleared by the 

 white ants, and not by the annual burning of the grass. Of 

 the six thousand seeds which he had cleared with the knife, 

 not less than four thousand had vegetated up to the date of 

 his writing ; thus proving that the outer coating of the seed must 

 be removed before sowing, to ensure vegetation. Mr Graham 

 further remarked, that M. Perrottet erred in stating that the 

 natives cut teak for their tools and other implements, as they pre- 

 ferred for such purposes the tough junglewood, which was very 

 plentiful; and that he was mistaken also in his scheme of planting 

 the forest from old roots, as, out of eighteen thousand planted by 

 ,Mr Smith, there were then scarcely thirty in existence. M. 

 Perrottet's recommendation, that the lateral branches of the teak 



