4 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
the coasts of Bengal and Burma, and in the 
Panjab. 
In England there is, save amongst specialists, 
small knowledge of the greater number of the Indian 
timbers and other forest products, for the reason 
that only few of these reach the West, the great 
bulk of the forest crop being utilized in the country. 
Teak, which is largely exported from Burma, is 
familiar, and so is the sandal from Mysore; rose- 
wood, ebony, and black-wood, are not unknown, 
while lac and various dyes and tanning materials 
come into evidence in many occasions of our daily 
life; but these exports, important as they are, do 
not account for the million and three-quarters sterling 
which represents the income from the Indian forests, 
nor for the five million tons of timber and fuel and 
the two hundred millions of bamboos they annually 
yield ; by far the largest proportion of this harvest 
is absorbed by the population, whose houses and 
whose agricultural and domestic implements are 
almost entirely manufactured from forest products, 
and who thus depend upon the forest, not only for 
the grazing of some fourteen million head of cattle 
each year, but for many other articles both of food 
and of general utility—in short, for luxuries as well 
as necessities. 
But not only may the forests of India be looked 
upon as necessary to the daily welfare of an agri- 
cultural population in supplying at a cheap rate, or 
often free, the requirements of their simple existence, 
but they present yet another aspect which is of even 
greater importance. In India, speaking generally, 
the rainfall of the year occurs at two seasons known 
