194 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
stronger argument in favour of the practice would 
have been forthcoming. Secondly, the plantations 
required continual and expensive supervision. 
During the first few years frequent weedings and 
cleanings were necessary, and later on judicious 
thinning alone could result in healthy maturity. 
The expense of such operations was calculated to 
affect the value of the final crop to a very serious 
degree, even if they could have been carried out ; but 
neither the supervision nor the labour was avail- 
able, and without these reversion to the original 
type of forest in the neighbourhood was but a ques- 
tion of time, while the dangers incidental to the 
creation of pure forests were also liable to assertion 
in insect and fungus damage, which could not be 
combated in a multitude of comparatively small 
areas scattered over a vast extent of country. 
There existed, therefore, very serious reasons for a 
careful reconsideration of the subject. It was finally 
resolved, after detailed inquiry, that the forester in 
Burma had sufficient work in tending the natural 
forests without undertaking the somewhat doubtful 
task of creating new ones on a system that Nature 
had in her experience not found to be suitable to the 
conditions she imposed. 
With regard to protection from fire, it had for 
long been noticed that its effects were more marked 
in their benefit on the inferior species, on shrubs 
and on grasses, than on the more valuable trees 
which it was intended chiefly to affect. The effects 
of fire upon established teak-trees, young or old, was 
not disputed ; even leaf fires of small intensity pro- 
duced injuries in the base of the stems that soon 
