114 
Indian Forest Records. 
[ voL. n. 
Again : — 
“ In the Punasa forests in 1874, when I took over charge of them, 
I found the most perfect new reproduction wherever 
there had recently been field cultivation 
In October the seedlings began rapidly to wither, and by 
the middle of the hot weather there was scarcely a single 
one alive ; the inahilitij of the tap-roots to penetrate through 
the dense mass of grass roots was the cause of their death. . 
“ During the 7 years that I was able to continue my observations, 
before I was transferred to the United Provinces, the seed- 
lings of pre-reservation days continued to strengthen 
themselves and develop, but no new contingent of seed- 
lings survived to swell their numbers, and in my inexperi- 
ence, and under the influence of the erroneous idea, un- 
fortunately still very generally prevalent, that the exclu- 
sion of fires and cattle was the one panacea for all our 
forest ills, I attributed the death of the new seedlings 
exclusively to the annual conflagrations 
We are now xviser, for ive have learnt that more than 20 years 
of successful fire prevention have given us no better results. 
The seedlings are as usual produced in countless numbers 
after every periodic gregarious seeding, but, being unable 
to push their tap-roots doivn deep enough, they all perish in 
their first ijear.’’’’ 
The above remarks refer especially to the type of Anjan forest grow- 
ing on sandstone. They apply, however, equally to the Anjan growing 
on trap as may be seen from the following : — 
“ On trap the Anjan is a very small tree, and has quite a different 
habit of growth. Moreover, besides the periodic gregarious 
seedings, a few trees here and there, scattered or in small 
groups, are to be met with every year in fruit during the 
interval. Nevertheless, reproduction is no more successful 
here than in the sub-type growing on sandstone. Indeed, 
the chances of survival, on the class of trap affected by the 
Anjan, are less favourable than on sandstone, which 
always offers numerous deep fissures for the downward 
development of the tap-root of the seedlings.” 
