progress by the Burma Department. It was drawn up by a trained officer who was to achieve distinction both in Burma and subsequently as Director of the Forest School at Dehra Dun. Oliver in Burma showed high professional attainments and at the same time was no mean botanist. We find evidence of both in this Working Plan. It is not a mere plan of operations for a short period of years, which was in reality the character of the plans which had been and were being drawn up in India to ensure a commencement of an organized method in fellings, and so forth, in different forests in the country. The Thonzé Working Plan was drawn up on the lines of scientific Working Plans in Europe, and sufficient data on the rates of growth of teak, and other matters, were now available to enable the Working Plan's Officer to give full play to the technical training he had received in Europe. The rotation of teak was fixed at 150 years, the area being divided into five periodic blocks of thirty years each. The plan was framed for one complete rotation, but the annual yield and area to be girdled over (the marking and girdling of the trees being done, it will be remembered, by the Department) was fixed for the first period of thirty years only, 1885 to 1914. The Thonzé Forest occupies a succession of hill ranges (the highest elevation, 2261 feet), running mainly north and south, with intersecting streams and much broken ground being bounded by the Kon Bilin, Kadin Bilin, Kadat and Okkan Reserves. It was constituted a Reserve on 2nd May, 1878. It consists of various types of forest: (1) evergreen forest, (2) moist forest, (3) dry forest, (4) indaing (Dipterocarpus tuberculatus) forest. The marketable products from this area at the time were teak timber, pyinma and kanvin timbers, timber for boat-hulls, cutch, bamboos, shaw fibre and kanyin oil. The forest is accessible to the Hlaing or Rangoon River and was doubtless exploited in Burmese times, but no record of the amount of timber taken out before the advent of British rule was extant. The number of trees girdled between 1854 and 1884 was 25,426.

It is impossible, nor at the present day is it necessary, to go into the details of this interesting plan. The careful description of compartments, the selection of sample plots and detailed measurement of the growing stock in each, and so forth, enabled the framer to fix his yield at a thousand first class trees to be girdled per annum, the proportion of younger-age classes present being considered satisfactory. It will be remembered that Brandis' first enumerations of the growing stock in the Burmese Teak Forests had been by means of the linear surveys method. Oliver's remarks on this head are of considerable interest, as they must have been invaluable at the period: "Compared with previous surveys in the Thonzé Forest, the average number of teak trees per 100 acres teak-producing forest stands as follows:

The linear survey appears to have been generally carried along the crests of ridges, where teak is always more abundant than in the valleys, and valuation surveys conducted on this principle would naturally give higher results than surveys which include a like proportion of hill and valley. The very small number of tres. below 4 feet girth found on the earlier surveys is remarkable. This point was noticed in the Government of India Resolution on the Annual Report of 1868-9, and the increase in small trees attributed to improvement of the forest and partly to the surveys not having been carried over a sufficiently large area of the forest to give a true average."

One of the most important events in the forest history of the period was the annexation of Upper Burma in January, 1885. In the Annual Review of Forest Administration, by the Inspector-General, for 1887-8, the first result of this new acquisition is apparent in the division of Burma into Lower and Upper, and the inclusion under the latter of an estimated area of 5153 square miles of protected forests. Linear valuation surveys had already been carried out over some 2000 acres in the Chindwin, Mandalay, Mu and Pyinmana Divisions, in order to obtain roughly the proportion of living teak of different ages to girdled and dead teak. These data would enable an estimate to be made as to whether the possibility of a forest had been, or was being, exceeded. The organization of the Department, especially of subordinates, was very much retarded by the paucity of gazetted officers in Burma to man the suddenly greatly expanded forest areas of the enlarged Province. Close European supervision was essential when the appointment of a considerable number of new subordinates was in question. Hill, officiating Inspector-General at the time, wrote: "The Provisional Permanent Staff, in so far as

Forest and Depot Establishment go, is purely tentative. It will have to be doubled, at least, as the forests are brought within touch and their stricter protection as Reserves has to be arranged for." It was early recognized that these forests in Upper Burma were both extensive and valuable, and had materially added to the forest wealth of the State. A determined effort had been made by timber merchants to carry on the old lumbering methods of exploitation. In the Inspector-General's (Ribbentrop) Review of Forest Administration, 1888-9, page 4, the following appears: "After a long controversy, agreements were concluded with the Bombay-Burma Trading Corporation for the working of the forests in Upper Burma, which they held under licences granted by the late Burmese Government and settlements with other licencees were in course of completion." The ad valorem duty on timber brought to Moulmein from Karenni and the Shan States was from the 1st April, 1889, raised to the rate of 7 per cent, which had been in force prior to 1881. This was rendered the more necessary as most of the forests had become the property of the British Government in consequence of the arrangements made with the Shan States subject to Upper Burma. During 1888–9, when the newly introduced organization had been working a bare two years, the forests yielded a gross revenue of nearly sixteen lakhs of rupees, and this sum was speedily exceeded. Hill was the officer especially associated with this work. By 1889 a new staff comprising twenty-one officers had been sanctioned for the new forest areas. As has been shown, a Special Forest Law was enacted for Upper Burma (II. 474).

In the Quinquennial Summary of Forest Progress, 1884-9, Hill, writing on artificial reproduction work in Burma, said: "Special attention has been given to the system of teak taungya plantations in Burma and to cultural operations as aiding natural reproduction. At the close of 1889 regular plantations covered 55,371 acres, taungya plantations (chiefly teak), 16,119 acres; and cultural operations of different kinds had been successfully practised over 237,664 acres. For the restocking of the vast areas of Indian Forests, natural reproduction from seed or coppice shoots must, as has been often pointed out, be the mainstay; and the records of the marked improvement of the young growth in areas that are continuously protected from fire and grazing are a gratifying feature in the more recent Administration Reports.'

By 1889-90 the exploration of the forests in Upper Burma

AN 1880 TEAK PLANTATION WITH DIPTEROCARPUS ALATUS, MAGAYI RESERVE, INSEIN DIVISION, BURMA