NOTES ON THE SIAMESE PROVINCES OF KOOWI, &C. 71 



rotted away, this soil remains as if it were a broken piece of 

 an earth-dyke by the side of a shallow trench — very puzzling 

 until one knows their origin. In time the rain blots them out, 

 but from their abundance one can see that this is one of 

 nature's methods of ploughing the jungle ground and must 

 play not an unimportant part among the more important 

 factors in altering the face of the land. 



The sappan-wood tree is abundant, so are many species of 

 rattan, but these with the dammar oil are the only jungle 

 products exported from those provinces. 



The Grass Country of Pateeo. 



The jungle suddenly ceases at Bangtaphannoi, and from 

 there southwards to beyond the village of Pateeo where the 

 jungle again appears in patches, stretches an undulating 

 country waving with lalang grass some sixty square miles in 

 extent. Some twenty-seven years ago, so the people say- 

 people that saw what they tell — a great typhoon crossed the 

 Peninsula here, levelling nearly every tree as it came and in- 

 cluded villages in the ruin, so that not a few human lives were 

 lost. A fire following completed the work and left an open, 

 blackened country that speedily became covered with grass 

 that took the place of the former thick jungle forest. Here 

 and there still stand charred stumps, while heaps of ashes 

 covered with grass and half buried fallen boles of trees through 

 which one's foot sinks when walking, abound everywhere. 

 Towards the confines of this open country, the hills have their 

 slopes facing the S.W., denuded of jungle and grass-covered, 

 while their slopes towards the N.E. still retain their thick 

 covering of trees. Every year the grass is set on fire and 

 burns its border line a little further into the jungle, so that 

 steadily it increases. The edge of the jungle, like the border 

 of an unhealthy wound, show's no robustness nor vitality, and 

 falls an easy pray to the all-devouring annual flames. 



The result of the action of these warring elements has been 

 to totally alter the climatic conditions, the fauna and the 

 flora of this small locality. A few species of grass have 

 supplanted the numerous forms of jungle growth; the small 



