FORESTERS’ LIFE IN BURMA 193 
into businesses which require ceaseless invention 
and fertility of resource is a danger to social 
progress, except, indeed, in those cases where both 
private capital and expert knowledge are lacking 
to inaugurate some new commercial departure that 
seems essential to industrial development. The 
demand for land in Rangoon and its neighbourhood 
has already justified large expenditure on reclama- 
tion, and the site of the Government timber depot 
is one that would probably prove to be a remunera- 
tive example of the extension of such work. 
The chief silvicultural questions of that day were 
the advisability of extensions of plantations, and the 
effect of protection from fire on the natural repro- 
duction of the teak-tree. With regard to the former, 
the plantations of Burma extended over an area 
of about 100 square miles, and had mostly been 
created with the object of growing timber—in this 
case teak and “ khair” —by sowing these species 
together with field crops. That is to say, forest 
land was broken up for cultivation on condition that 
forest seed was sown with the field crops; and the 
cultivator thus had the advantage of free land, 
besides payment for surviving seedlings when he 
quitted his temporary holding. There is no doubt 
of the ingenuity and efficiency of the system, but it 
involves certain drawbacks that were perhaps not 
fully recognized in the past. 
In the first place, the best soil was naturally 
selected for raising the field crops, and on such land 
natural regeneration of forest trees was in itself 
probable. If the selection had been always made in 
areas where tree-growth was inferior or wanting, a 
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