repeatedly cut over, and much of it is a waste plain containing no growth whatever. The Government portion is the main source of the fuel-supply of Cocanada. The species found in this forest consist chiefly of four varieties of Avicennias, and of Rhizophorœ, Ægiceras, Lumnitzeras, Ceriops, and other inferior trees. Ceriops Candolleana yields a bark ('gedara bark') which the villagers use for colouring fishing-nets. The barks of the other mangrove species, although said to be good tanning materials, are not used as such, probably because they contain a large percentage of colouring matter. The forest is useful only for the fuel it yields.
Mangrove wood is inferior as fuel to the ordinary upland jungle species, but Lumnitzera racemosa (though scarce) is extremely hard and burns excellently, and the Ceriops shrub burns even when green if the bark is removed. Sonneratia apetala (kalingi) is a soft wood which is useful in brick-kilns when newly cut, but rapidly rots. The worst fuel of all is the tilla, a pithy wood full of an acrid juice which smokes more than it burns.
Besides these natural jungles, the coast forests comprise the two large plantations of casuarina already mentioned, which yield firewood and poles or piles for the river-protection works of the Public Works department. The Kandikuppa plantation (532 acres in extent and only partially planted at present) lies on the coast about 30 miles from Cocanada and has direct water communication with that town. The Bendamúlanka block (470 acres in extent) is 30 miles further down the coast, and is nearly planted up, but has only indirect and tortuous water communication with Cocanada.
Proceeding northward from the coast, scattered blocks of forest are met with in the Rajahmundry and Peddápuram ranges. These chiefly contain wood fit only for fuel, though stunted specimens of timber-yielding trees are scattered here and there and provide small timber for building huts and so forth. Among these latter are Terminalia tomentosa, Diospyros melanoxylon, Pterocarpus Marsupium, Anogeissus latifolia, Lagerstrœmia parviflora, Adina cordifolia, Chloroxylon Swietenia, Lebedieropsis orbicularis, Soymida febrifuga, and a sprinkling of young Xylia dolabriformis and some patches of bamboo.
The forests of Pólavaram and Yellavaram are of a better character. In Yellavaram there are 47 square miles of good forest in which fairly large timber (three to five feet in girth) is found, and some 96 square miles containing trees (one and half to three feet in girth) providing timber of a smaller kind. The principal timber species are the Xylia, Terminalia,
