728 EDITORIAL NOTES. [April 



of mutual participation between the owners of our waste lands and 

 the Government to plant these up. Or would it be an impossible 

 thing for Government to acquire the waste lands of the United 

 Kingdom by purchase and deal with them for the common good, if 

 the owners cannot be brought to see that their own interests are 

 largely involved in doing so ? We are talking of buying out the 

 proprietors of the sister Island. If we can accomplish that task 

 with equity and national advantage, surely the acquirement of the 

 waste lands of Great Britain by the Government would be a light 

 task by comparison, and would eventually result in an enormous 

 increase of national wealth. 



Timber merchants are anxiously watching the progress of an 

 American invention for drying wood by a quick process in which 

 cold air plays an important part. Instead of wasting time and 

 causing loss of interest on capital in the shape of timber on hand, 

 which needs three to seven years to mature naturally, it is claimed 

 for the new process that it matures wood in three days. A tree 

 felled to-day can be delivered, sawn into shape, and ready for use 

 in the building and furniture trades next week. Of course, such a 

 process, if really effective and cheap, tends to make the immense 

 stocks of timber in tlie docks still more cumbersome than before, 

 and the discovery is therefore no good news for the capitalists 

 engaged in the wood trade. 



Sandal-wood, we learn from our contemporary The Indian Agri- 

 culturist, is threatened with extermination. The average annual 

 income from this one article alone is about five lakhs of rupees, or 

 about £50,000, and this, it is said, represents an output of about 

 1000 tons of heart-v/ood. It is only the heart- wood that has any 

 commercial value, and the tree never attains greater dimensions 

 than a considerable shrub. A thousand tons, then, of what is really 

 a comparatively liglit timber nnist represent an immense sacriiice of 

 the trees annually, even if to make up the total weight every part 

 of the tree were thrown in. But such is not the case, for the sap- 

 wood is of no value, and is cut away from the trees when tliey are 

 felled, and permitted to go to waste. Tlie sandal-wood forests in 

 Mysore are a Government monopoly, and the people of the State are 

 not directly interested in their preservation ; and thus the work of 

 extinction of tlie existing stock is accelerated by preventable causes, 

 while there appears to be no adequate steps taken either to protect, 



