104 GBEGAEIOUSNESS AND SOCIABILITY OP SPECIES. 



out all undergrowth, including even grass. 



(Z) The enormous strength and height of teak stool-shoots in 

 their very first year. 



(m) The existence of a more or less perfect uniformity of age, 

 due to the greater portion of the crop having sprung up within the 

 short interval of years during which the alluvial flats in question 

 were being deposited. 



(n) The conspicuously greater longevity of teak. 



(o) Its profuse, almost annual, seeding. 



(p) Its greater stature as compared with many of its compa- 

 nions. 



B. — The gregariousness of teak in the second instance may be 

 accounted for thus: — • 



(a) Profuse annual seeding of the trees rotmd and inside the 

 original fields, by which means the ground got sown to a certain 

 extent everywhere with teak. 



(6) The cultivation of the soil furnished this seed with an ex- 

 cellent bed, whence the production of a certain number of vigorous 

 teak seedhngs every year. 



(c) These seedlings, possessing great vitality and throwing up 

 shoots every year from the collum of the root, gradually strength- 

 ened themselves, and obviously suffered Httle or no damage from 

 the mere annual scratching of the rude plough. 



(d) They were obviously still further strengthened in a remark- 

 able degree by the hand-plucking of all surrounding grass and 

 weeds, the agricultural crop alone being never dense enough to 

 impede their development and the wandering squatter cultivator 

 never finding their presence sufficiently hurtful to eradicate them. 



(e) Besides this, the extraordinary vitality of the seeds, lying 

 iu the soil in largo quantities when the field was abandoned, pro- 

 duced an abundant crop of seedlings in the thoroughly loosened soil 

 during the ensuing two or three years. 



(/) On the fields being abandoned, the already established seed- 

 lings and seedling-shoots, now shooting up vigorously ahead, and 

 thanks also to character (d) under Instance A, suppressed most of 

 the individuals of such species as were able to reproduce them- 

 selves, like the teak, during the course of the squatter cultivation- 



(g) See [k) of Instance A. 



(A) See (e) of Instance A. 



(?) The more or less uniform height of the various individuals, 

 due to their having finally started upwards all together on the 



