Indian Forest Records . 
[Von. VIII 
PART II. 
The Taungya System in Northern Bengal. 
BY 
E. 0. SHEBBEARE. 
Although, the Taungya System in Bengal, even regarded as a broad 
principle, is scarcely out of the experimental stage yet, it has been sug¬ 
gested that whatever information exists concerning it ought to be made 
known and I have therefore been asked to write this account. Bather 
than appear to be “ sitting on ” information which might be of interest 
to foresters in other provinces, I am including, for what they are worth, 
some recent ideas and suggestions still under experiment along with the 
details of methods more or less established by experience. This ex¬ 
perience has been gained partly by the Forest and partly by the Cinchona 
Department which has been systematically planting up forest after the 
removal of the Cinchona crop on the Mongpoo plantation for the last 
twelve or thirteen years, at the rate of about 250 acres annually. It is 
to Mr. Bussell of the latter department that we owe most of what we know 
concerning the work in the middle and foot hills as well as up-to-date 
nursery practice throughout. 
2. The reason for introducing the system was the unsatisfactory state 
of natural regeneration of all the more valuable species both in the plains 
and the hills, in the former probably due to conditions induced by success¬ 
ful fire protection. In the case of sal, not only are natural seedlings 
scarce and established saplings absent but even the pole stage is often 
wanting in forests in which the mature crop is mainly sal. Something 
had to be done, and the result of experiments, many of them on a consider¬ 
able scale and extending over several years, led to the rejection succes¬ 
sively of intensive weeding, regulated burning and various methods of 
supplementing natural regeneration, in favour of clear-felling and re¬ 
stocking. Further experiments pointed to field-crops as the surest 
means of establishing the plants, a conclusion arrived at, curiously 
enough, by the Cinchona and Forest Departments quite independently 
at about the same time. 
3. The history of the idea of employing field-crops to establish forest 
crops (long known under its Burmese name of “ taungya ”) goes back 
some way even in Northern Bengal, for an attempt to establish sal 
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