Preliminary Report on the Forest and other Vegetation of Pegu

Abstract

INDIAN forest reports have of late years become as plentiful as the proverbial blackberries. The frequent appearance of them is a consequence that might be expected when we consider the wide range of country which comes under the supervision of the Forest Department of India. So far as bulk or quantity of printed matter is concerned, no one can say that these forests are not fairly represented in the Government papers which appear in the course of a year, but the quality of these reports is another question. They too often contain merely the dry details of work carried on during the year, and are interesting only to those immediately connected with the special department from which the reports emanate. Occasionally, however, a report is issued which in reality is something more, containing much valuable information on subjects connected with forest conservancy, and amongst such Mr. Kurz's may be classified. It is, in fact, rather a description of the vegetation of Pegu, to which are added appendices occupying quite two-thirds of the whole bulk of the volume. Taking the actual report itself, which, as indicated in the title, is of a preliminary character, the matter in which will be worked out in Mr. Kurz's forthcoming book, we find it divided into two parts, first, the “General Report,” and second, the “Special Report.” The general report is again divided into two sections—(A) A general aspect of the country, its geological and climatological features, in connection with the flora. (B) A botanical description of Pegu, with special reference to its forests. After a very brief topographical sketch of Pegu, Mr. Kurz considers the geological aspect of the country from a botanical point of view, which, unlike that of the true geologist, is not to consider the age of the rocks, &c., but simply their extent and quality, from which inferences may be drawn of the vegetation found growing upon each formation. The geology of Pegu is described as being very simple and uniform, the hills being composed solely of sandstone, skirted at their base by a strip of diluvium, “interrupted by a deeper or shallower alluvium wherever choungs come down from the hills, and succeeded by the vast alluvial plains, through which the Irrawaddy and Sittang flow.” The laterite formation is described as being of the highest importance in the various floras of India. The term laterite, as generally used by foresters in Burmah, comprises several heterogeneous rocks and soils, all characterised by a more or less ferruginous appearance, but really connected in no other way than that they are all permeated by hyperoxide of iron. “No other formation,” Mr. Kurz writes, “except metamorphic and volcanic ones, can boast of such a variety of species, in spite of its apparent sterility, as laterite. It is this rock that affects vegetation so much that the great difference between the floras of Malacca, Borneo, Sumatra, &c., on the one hand, and that of Java on the other side, is produced. It is also this formation which allows so many Australian genera, like Melaleuca, Backea, Tristania, Leucapogon, &c., to spread so far to the north-west, some of which, like Tristania, spread as far north as the Ava frontier. If all laterite plants were to be erased from a list of the plants of Pegu proper the flora would be rendered very uninteresting indeed.”

Preliminary Report on the Forest and other Vegetation of Pegu.

By Sulpice Kurz, Curator of the Herbarium, and Librarian, Royal Botanical Gardens, Calcutta. (Calcutta: C. B. Lewis, 1875.)