The most important forest products are timber and bamboo, firewood and lac (the source of shellac). There are about 74 species of timber, of which two-thirds are commercially exploited. The forests are inhabited by wild animals such as elephants, tigers, deer and wild pigs.
Population.
Assam has a population of approximately 25 million with a ratio of 896 females for every 1,000 males. Since time immemorial, Assam has been the happy meeting ground of people belonging to different ethnic groups, communities and cultural entities. For example, even the Brahmaputra Valley is an area rich with the contribution of different such groups most of whom got assimilated in the composite Assamese identity. To the south, in the Barak valley, Bengali-speaking people along with tribal communities have been making similar contributions to the emergence of a distinct identity of Assam.
Another group which deserves special mention is the tea garden community. During the second half of the Nineteenth Century, when the British started tea cultivation on a large scale in Assam, they were faced with the problem of dearth of labour. Hence, they brought in people from other parts of the country --- from Orissa and Bihar and from as far as Tamil Nadu and Kerala.
These people ultimately settled down in the State, and successive generations not only intermingled among themselves but also assimilated much of the Assamese culture to develop a lifestyle of their own. Some of them left the tea estates and found other occupations. Today, with their attractive dances (Jhumur) and songs, and their close rapport with the tea plant, they have a distinct culture of their own.
Thus, There has been racial intermixture among the population of Assam. The Mongoloid racial stock have large number of tribes. Their physical features are described as "a short head, a broad nose, a flat and comparatively hairless face, a short but muscular figure and a yellow skin.
