222 
A NATURALIST ON THE FROWN . 
sapling that would have grown into one of the monarchs 
of the forest. In a few minutes, and to satisfy the needs 
of an hour, you would see him reduce to perennial unsight- 
liness the shapeliest works of Nature’s hand. 
You will infer that the Forest Department regards 
him with no friendly eye, and you will be right ; for, 
in sooth, there is bitter enmity between them. The 
zealous officers of that Department regard the Koonbee , 
I am told, as vermin, which ought to be destroyed, 
and he, I fear, regards them as gamekeepers, whose 
mission is only his destruction. And now at last they 
have devised a means to exterminate him by putting an 
end to a practice which he calls koomree. This is a 
method of agriculture which he prefers to all others. It 
consists in felling the forest, burning it where it lies, 
scattering a few handfuls of coarse grain among the 
ashes, and reaping the crop when it is ready. Thus, by 
destroying forest worth a hundred rupees, he gets a crop 
worth twenty for a year or two, and then the strength of 
the virgin soil is exhausted, so he moves on and repeats 
the process elsewhere. 
From time immemorial he has lived by tilling the 
ground in this simple fashion without check, and now it 
