網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

made in the reports of Captains O'Brien, Tremenheere and Guthrie.

Wallich had attributed the absence of teak seedlings in the forests entirely to fire. O'Brien agreed with this opinion, although he observed how apt the buoyant and light nature of the seed rendered it to be floated away during the rains. But Falconer was of opinion that fire alone would not account for this absence, as was proved by the observations made in the Upper Mittigate and elsewhere where the trees were very dense and shady, without grass jungle, and where the sound condition of the fallen timber showed that the tracts had not been ravaged by fire for many years. And yet seedlings were uncommon in these forests. But the Doctor added the following remark: "The amount of destructive agency which is exercised by the fires, is proved by the prevalent age of the young and undersized trees which are met with in the exhausted forests, the majority of them being about 20 or 25 years old, dating, in fact, from the period immediately preceding the time when the forests began to be worked and to be systematically burnt. Seedlings or young trees under that age are comparatively very rare.'

[ocr errors]
[ocr errors]

Falconer offered the following solution of the general absence of teak seedlings in the forests: Assuming it to be an established fact that teak seedlings are more numerous upon the Thoung-yeen than upon the Attaran River, the only reason I can assign for the difference is, that the teak on the former grows in a hilly country, upon elevated steppes or cliffs, or hill-sides, where the nuts meet with more chances of entanglement from irregularities of the surface, so as to arrest their removal and lodge them in pits or cracks, or under stones-thus giving them the accidents favourable to germination, while the parent trees are in many situations so difficult of removal that they are allowed to stand. In the teak plantation formerly attached to the Botanic Garden the surface of the ground is very broken and uneven. Spontaneous teak seedlings have been constantly observed to be more numerous there than in the cultivated parts of the garden, where the trees stand upon smooth and well-mown lawns, although the parent trees are alike in every respect. I do not think that difference of soil has anything to do with the asserted difference between the Attaran and Thoung-yeen Rivers, as regards their relative production of teak seedlings; for the teak grows upon a wide range of soils, occurring equally

in the black heavy cotton soil and rugged cliffs of Malabar, Canara and Travancore, and on the moist rich bottoms of the upland valleys, or sandy banks of the creeks on the Attaran River. Soil will affect the growth of the tree and the quality of the timber, but it will not determine the numerical production of seedlings. It may be asked, with so many alleged inherent obstacles to the propagation of teak, how were the forests kept up in the state of nature, and why have they fallen off so much now? The reply to this is, that although the forests in their virgin state produced myriads of seeds, they show now, by the infrequency of large teak trees, that few of those seeds met with the concurrence of accidents favourable to their growth into young plants, whereas since they have been worked by man, the number of adverse conditions have been augmented by the agency of fire, at the same time that the source of the supply of seeds has been vastly diminished by the active felling of the adult trees."

Falconer then pointed out, though the inaptitude of the teak seed for the propagation of the species in the wild state might at the time apply, young seedlings could be readily reared artificially, and he instanced and described the Conolly plantations in Malabar, which have been already referred to. Commenting upon Colvin's recommendation that the licences in the Attaran Forests should be converted into leases in perpetuity with a final clause of resumption unless the grantees should have, at the end of ten years, planted one-half or onethird the number of trees that had been removed on the average of the last ten years, and that the tenures should include a right of property in all the trees and products of the forests, Falconer said that the only doubt apparently existing in Colvin's mind on the subject of these perpetual grants was whether it was, in fact, really practicable, in view of past failures, to renew the forests by artificial culture.

From the example afforded by Conolly's work in Malabar Falconer considered it already proved that the forests could be so renewed. But he doubted whether it could or would be done by the grantees. The experience of the past twenty years was against it. The latter had in no instance shown any interest in or wish to replant the areas they felled, or to spend any money on making provision for a period some eighty years ahead. Their only object had been to exploit the timber and make as much money out of it as possible in the shortest space of time. As one source of timber became exhausted,

other more remote tracts were explored until the merchants went far beyond the boundaries of the Province and drew their supplies from the Shan States upon the Thoung-yeen, whence the greater part of the timber was then being derived. The grantees were fully awake to the impending exhaustion of their grants, but in no instance was a steady effort being made to maintain the value of the property for the future by planting; rather, the future was anticipated by felling every tree of commercial size. And this, in spite of the fact that, although their tenures were licences revocable at will, between 1829 and 1846 no licence had been so revoked, ejectment measures resorted to by Guthrie having been immediately discountenanced by Government. Moreover, these licences had been sold again and again and passed from hand to hand, so that few of them now remained with the original holders. If such had been the results in the past, when the forests were stocked with teak yielding handsome profits, how could it be expected that the grantees would now restock the exhausted forests with no prospect of a return for nearly a century? As to the value to the grantee of the other products of the forests, the demand for timber at Moulmein was confined to teak; for other woods it had still to be created. This it may be remarked was almost true half a century later. Also at that time there was no resident population in the Attaran Forests to work upon the miscellaneous products. Falconer contrasted the idea of the new leases with the opinion expressed by Sir Thomas Munro in Madras in the Minute abolishing the Conservatorship in 1822, that the proprietors would replant their forest areas, and stated that the principle, however sound in the abstract, was much in advance of the existing conditions and prospects.

On whatever principle the licences were dealt with in the future, he pointed out that the renewal of the trees was the main object of the lease, and therefore the number of young trees to be raised by the grantees should be fixed without exacting more than could be reasonably obtained. In Travancore ten young trees were planted for every full-grown tree felled. Blundell, in 1841, had prescribed five and Tremenheere, in 1842, reduced the number to three. Colvin suggested onethird to one-half of the whole number of trees extracted from the grant in the previous ten years. The objection to the latter was that as the teak trees stood widely apart on the area in mixture with a number of other species, the grantee could

easily crowd a number of young trees at 6 feet apart on to a few acres in a corner of his grant and thus have the total number required ready for the inspection. But this would have little useful effect on replanting the whole of the area from which the old teak had been removed during the previous ten years. And this, of course, was the object aimed at.

The extent of the forests upon the Attaran which it was suggested should be leased was approximately estimated at 228 square miles, 110 of which were reckoned to bear teak very unequally distributed on this area. Assuming that these forests were given under perpetual leases, Falconer recommended that the following replanting conditions should be inserted in the leases, on the principle that the proportion of the surface brought under teak planting was of greater importance with reference to the efficient renovation of the forests, and their ultimate productiveness, than the number of plants raised in a crowded spot.

Supposing, said Falconer, the forest trees, large and small, to stand 30 feet apart, there would be 30,976 to the square mile; and assuming one in ten to be teak, there would be 3097 to the same area, and 340,736 over the whole extent of teak-yielding forest. This number was considerably in excess of any returns that had been made of the actual contents of the teak forests upon the Attaran rivers, which Guthrie fixed as low as 93,458 large and small, but excluding very young trees upon an extent of 140 square miles. The rate here given, however, was low for the area, as it would allow less than five teak trees (4·84) to the acre, and it was not much in excess of what some of the best forests had been supposed to bear. O'Brien considered that there were from 10,000 to 12,000 fullgrown teak trees fit to cut upon the Kyoon-Geown Forest in 1841, with an unusual abundance of young trees. This forest, which in the returns was fixed at 8 square miles, had been at that time worked for ten years, and if O'Brien's estimate were adopted as nearly approximate, and assuming the young trees to have only equalled the full-sized ones, there would have been from 20,000 to 24,000 teak, large and small, on KyoonGeown. The same area (8 square miles) with 4.84 teak to the acre would yield 24,780 trees, and it did not appear that an adequate and beneficial renovation of the forests, so far as the interests of Government and the well-being of the Province are concerned, could be well fixed at a lower rate. The objection at first sight was that it was framed too low.

In order to carry out this principle Falconer advocated that the leases should contain conditions that the grantees show, at the end of ten years, that one-half of the area of their forest holdings was either planted out or bore young natural teak growth, at the rate of 4.84 per acre or 3097.6 to the square mile, estimated upon the whole of the grant, exclusive of fullgrown trees. This would leave half the area at their disposal for occupation or otherwise, and imply 9.68 young teak upon the acre of the moiety under teak culture. At the end of the ten years the grantees would have to show 320 acres per square mile planted throughout with young teak and bearing not less than 3097 trees, or an annual planting area of 32 acres containing 310 trees.

This proposal of Falconer's, which was in effect to get the plants at once placed at the distances best suited to their growth to maturity, did not apparently take into account that a proportion of these young trees would almost certainly fail, either from being smothered by the more rapid-growing softwooded species, bamboos, etc., since the young trees might be planted the year before the inspection was made and be killed out a year or two afterwards; nor was any provision made for death by disease, insect attack, and so forth. For the Doctor did not appear to contemplate that any supervision could be given to the young trees so widely spaced apart, which were apparently to be subsequently left to fend for themselves. It appears an obvious statement to make that, for the 4.84 mature teak per acre found standing in the forests, a far larger number per acre must have become eliminated in the struggle for existence during the growth to maturity. Consequently to make fairly certain of obtaining the 4.84 trees per acre at the end of the rotation it would be necessary to start with a far larger number.

Falconer deprecated the idea of asking the grantees to make plantations on the Conolly lines owing to the cost of looking after them, which the grantees would not be likely to face as there would be no sale for the thinnings owing to the lack of a local population, whilst the expense of rafting them to Moulmein would not pay; for bamboos being so abundant and in universal use, small pole timber had little value. Tremenheere had suggested that if the licence-holder would not replant his forest area it should be done by Government at his expense. Falconer agreed with Colvin that this was inadvisable, adding, "The grantee should be alone responsible for his own failure

« 上一頁繼續 »