Felling takes place during the rainy season when the ground is soft and wet, so that the trees as they fall are not likely to sustain any serious damage. Three labourers working together are able to fell three trees in one day. The rough logs are piled side by side until they are removed by the elephants. One of these strong sagacious creatures is harnessed to the log by ropes. He drags it over the ground to the nearest water, his work being considerably lightened by the aid of rude rollers placed along the track. The elephants on reaching the water, pile up the logs on the bank, until the buyer or the agent has examined them. The owner places his own mark on them for purposes of identification, and then the elephants roll them into the water, and place them in positions that render their being bound into rafts a comparatively easy matter. Thieves make themselves busy at such times, breaking up rafts, stealing logs from which they obliterate the owner's mark, and disposing of them as rapidly as possible at nominal values to the first customer they can find. They keep on the look-out for stray elephants too, and occasionally manage to get safely away with their valuable spoil. No replanting goes on, and great waste of timber is caused by the servants of the lessees. The forests will ultimately be destroyed unless some regulations are made with regard to the girth of the trees cut down, and the replanting of fresh ones in the places of those that have been felled. The loss that the world will experience from the loss of the wood, will be infinitesimal compared with the injury that is likely to fall upon the country itself in the changed climatic conditions that invariably attend such wholesale deforestation. Very fine trees are allowed to stand because the natives are afraid to cut them down. Within any giant of the forest they suppose powerful spirits to be embodied, and they are afraid to call down upon themselves unforeseen and terrible visitations of anger from the spirits who inhabit them.