1885.] THE TRAVELLING FORESTER. 185 



THE TRAVELLING FORESTER. 



IN THE WOODS OF BRITISH GUIANA, 



IN this excursion, we trust to the interest excited by the splendid 

 exhibit at the late International Forestry Exhibition of this the 

 only British colony in South America. The magnificent wood slabs 

 of the great ti'ees of tliese forests, the Mora and the Greenheart, the 

 beautiful specimens of fibres and gums, as well as the articles of 

 Indian manufacture, and the diversified display of photographic 

 views of scenery, were admired by tlie general public. And 

 students could not but be struck by the fact of so many new woods 

 as yet undescribed in scientific annals. From the admirable special 

 catalogue, printed in the colony, and sent along with the exhibits, 

 might be culled the native names and habitats of these novelties ; 

 but as most of them are in good keeping in this country, let us 

 patiently wait for fuller information. Meanwhile we note that the 

 cry of forest conservancy is being raised in British Guiana. Grants 

 for various terms of certain forest tracks are now given to applicants, 

 under the supervision of the Crown Surveyor, at a rental of 30 cents 

 an acre per annum, with no re.strictions either as to renewing or 

 cutting down timber. And as the Surveyor and his commissaries 

 have not the time to inspect the areas included in the wood-cutting 

 grants in any but in the most perfunctory way, fell havoc and 

 destruction in the well-known timber area of the province have 

 resulted. The consequences are that in this area lying adjacent to 

 the sugar-land immediately along the sea-coast, and which is the 

 only one of four distinct tracts of land of tiie 86,000 square miles 

 in the colony cultivated to any extent, timber-cutting is now entirely 

 at a standstill. The pleaders for forest conservancy look to the 

 forest region beyond this second one from the sliore, which they 

 estimate to contain probably some 70,000 square miles. They 

 propose something like a union of the present system with that 

 advocated by Mr. William Walker, late Government Secretary, which 

 was founded on the Indian Forest Administration, but which the 

 writer of the preface to the Catalogue pronounces too elaborate for 

 colonial needs. Under this the services of Indians and river-men 

 might be made available. The founding of settlements in the as yet 

 almost uninhabited forest district seems a necessity, if only to obtain 

 old Greenheart, commonly called " Black Greenheart," not now to be 

 procured in the timber tract. The courses of the four great rivers 

 of the colony, its waterways of commerce, beginning in the great 

 Savannah legion beyond the forest one, are interrupted throughout 

 it by rapids, cataracts, and falls. Canals cut through these would 



