326 India. 
facilities or for purposes of the chase. Thus as we 
have seen, only about 24 or 25 percent of the entire 
area of India is covered by woodland, not over 20 
percent being under cultivation, leaving about 55 per- 
cent either natural desert, waste, or grazing lands. 
The great forests of India are in Burma; extensive 
woods clothe the foothills of the Himalayas and are 
scattered in smaller bodies throughout the more humid 
portions of the country, while the dry northwestern 
territories are practically treeless wastes. Large 
areas of densely settled districts are so completely void 
of forest that millions of people regularly burn cow 
dung as fuel, while equally large districts are still 
impenetrable, wild woods, where, for want of market, 
it hardly pays to cut even the best of timbers. 
The great mass of forests in India are stocked with 
hardwoods, which in these tropical countries are 
largely evergreens, or nearly so, although the large 
areas of dry forest are deciduous by seasons; only a 
small portion of the forest area is covered by conifers, 
both pine and cedar, these pine forests being generally 
restricted to higher altitudes. The hardwoods, most 
of which in India truly deserve this name, belong to a 
great variety of plant families, some of the most im- 
portant being the Leguminose, Verbenacezx, Diptero- 
carpe, Combretacez, Rubiacee, Ebenacee, Euphor- 
biaceze, Myrtacez, and others, and a relatively small 
portion represented by Cupulifere and other families 
familiar to us. The most important, valuable species 
are Teak, Sal, and Deodar. 
In the greater part of India the hardwood forest 
consists not of a few species, as with us, but is made up 
