Page:Gazetteer of the province of Oudh ... (IA cu31924073057352).pdf/185

 RAE 177 very fine tasar silk. The cocoon when cut spirally into a thin long strip was used during the native rule by matchlock-men to fasten the barrel to the stock of their matchlocks, and was esteemed by them better for that purpose than iron. The thread is used sometimes now for the end of the line employed in fishing. Whether certain trees are indigenous or not.-Exception may perhaps be taken to the tun tree being enumerated as among the indigenous products of the district. It is very seldom seen, and is never cultivated as the mango, the mahaa, and other trees are, so it is but natural to suppose that those which exist were self-sown. It never attains in this district the same size or height which it reaches in the forests of Oudh, and the same may be said of the shísham tree; but for this there are probably very good reasons independent of the prevalent idea that forest trees will not grow outside certain tracts of country. It will be generally admitted that these trees are essentially forest trees, and it would be well worth the while of Government to have plantations of them made on true forest principles, to see whether, when grown close together and subse- quently thianed, they would not attain the same height and growth as their fellows of the forest. No tree will attain the same height when grown far from other trees that it will when closely surrounded, and it is natural to suppose that, owing to the clearance consequent on increasing population, the shisham and tun trees in this district grew gradually smaller till the species has deteriorated to the size of the specimens now extant, and probably in a few years if left to themselves they will become extinct. The same reasoning applies most probably to most so called forest trees, but there was a special reason for the extinction of the sal, Shorea robusta," which is called by the natives the "sákhu” tree. Sál trees are to be found to the south of the Dudhi, Pargana Singrauli, south Mirzapur, probably not more than one hundred miles from Benares, but though covering vast tracts of waste land, it is seldom that a full-grown tree can be found, because the saplings are tapped by the lessees or con- tractors before they are eight years old for a juice which is then called dhüp," and for which they get a ready sale in the bazars. The process kills the saplings in a month or two when the villagers cut down, stack, and just before the rains, set fire to them windward of a patch of ground which they want to break up; the people declaring all the time that although the seed of the sal tree germinates the tree cannot attain to any age or size in tbose parts. No clearer proof could te producer that it is the increase of population that destroys the indigenous pro- ducts of districts, and that it is not the climate, nor the soil, but the destructive element in man that disagrees with these giants of the forest. The seed of the sál free germinates in this district.-Bábu Ajít Singh, a taluqdar in the Partabgarh district, and other Europeans and natives, have made efforts to raise the sál tree by seed in that and other districts, but till this year hitherto without any recorded success ; up to the time of Nasír-ud-dín Haidar there were sål trees near Chár Bágh in 23