280 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
Interference with shifting cultivation, even though 
unduly delayed, is still of a mild nature ; it consists 
in allotting areas for the practice of this pernicious 
custom, at the same time prohibiting the entry of 
new settlers into these areas; and this policy has 
been successful, especially in Burma, where the 
Karens doubtless owe to it that they have hitherto 
escaped the fate that overtakes most savage tribes 
in India, that of absorption with the mixed races of 
Hindustan. In the Central Provinces the practice 
is fast dying out ; in other parts of India it remains 
under altered conditions ; for instance, in Bombay 
the people laboriously strip the forest trees of their 
green shoots, and convey them to their fields to 
burn on the seed-beds, when they can have any 
quantity of similar material ready cut in the annual 
felling areas, thereby indicating a blind trust in the 
hidden wisdom of their ancestors that is both 
humorous and pathetic. In Assam, too, there 
should be no difficulty in gradually checking this 
evil, if no lapses are permitted from the constant 
supervision that is required to effect the object in 
view. The Garos claim that in their hills there is 
no waste land, that it is all their own property, and 
forestry, pending a consideration of this unusual 
claim, has made but slight progress ; but the people 
are already mixing with the outside population, and 
in a few more years will probably be less suspicious, 
and more eager to exploit to the full the products 
of their wild country. 
In the Garo Hills are earthquakes and elephants : 
the former occur frequently, with strange rumblings 
that terrify the unaccustomed traveller ; the latter 
