FORESTERS’ LIFE IN BURMA 173 
tion for the cost of handling it will continue must 
remain a matter of opinion. The timber market 
brooks but little interference: a constant supply of 
the same wood of similar quality and at about a 
similar price seems necessary to its satisfaction ; and 
if these factors are not present in the case of any 
given timber, the market seeks them in another. If 
it cannot get the best timber in the quantity and 
quality desired, the next best that fulfils these 
requirements is sought out, and such a timber 
might be difficult to oust when the time arrives that 
teak can be offered in greater quantity and better 
quality than during the last few years. 
Of other timbers, those required for railway 
sleepers are at present the most valuable, but the 
cost of conversion and carriage leaves but little to 
book as the value of the wood. Burma has not at 
this time a population large enough to fully utilize 
locally her forest crop, as is the case in India, where 
the people themselves consume by far the greater 
portion of the outturn, and it is because there is no 
pressure on the forest that a State forest property 
can be built up at leisure that shall in the future 
efficiently serve the welfare of a much larger popu- 
lation. There can be no doubt that the resources of 
this rich Province will at some future day be utilized 
to the full, and, as the Burmese as a nation can 
hardly be expected to multiply so as to fill the land, 
it seems likely that an outlet for emigration from 
the populous West will be afforded to a hardier and 
more laborious people. Already the occupancy of 
rich, hitherto ownerless, soil follows in the track 
of the few lines of railway that tap the wealth of 
