Editorial Notes. 455 



their vapour into genial showers, which water and refresh the forest 

 itself as well as the crops of the husbandman on the cultivated land 

 of the adjoining districts. 



Such facts being so well known, and self-evident to all who take 

 the trouble to observe them, it is truly lamentable to see how little 

 they are appreciated or acted upon by the public or the Government ; 

 and the ruthless destruction of the forests throughout the British 

 Empire is allowed to go on year after year, completely subverting the 

 healthful balance of nature, without any really earnest and effective 

 effort being made to remedy or check the evil. The little that 

 Government has done, and that only in a half-hearted manner, 

 through the means of the Indian Forest Department, is but as a mere 

 drop in the ocean, and until there is a radical change in the system, 

 which will throw life and energy into it, and entice properly 

 qualified and energetic men to enter the service, matters can only 

 go on from bad to worse, till drought and famine convert the fair 

 and luxuriant plains of Hindostan into little better than an Asiatic 

 Sahara. 



An eminent statesman and ]\Iember of Parliament, jNIr. Bright, speak- 

 ing lately upon the calamitous famine with which a large portion of India 

 is now so severely stricken, and to relieve which so much praiseworthy 

 and generous feeling is being displayed in this country, rightly attributes 

 the cause of the famine to the want of water, and strongly advocates the 

 formation of a network of canals throughout India for the double 

 purpose of transport and irrigation ; but erroneously condemning the 

 construction of railways as reckless waste of the resources of the 

 country. Canals for transport in any country where railways can be 

 constnicted are utterly out of date, and only afford a receptacle for all 

 the dirt and filth of the neighbourhood, producing and exhaling under a 

 tropical sun an unlimited amount of poisonous fever-producing 

 malaria, most unhealthy and detrimental to human life. 



Canals for irrigation, and reservoirs for the storage of water, are highly 

 important items in the industrial economy of such a thirsty land, and 

 cannot be neglected with impurity ; but of what use or profit can they 

 be unless the water is first produced to fill them? The want of sufficient 

 moisture in the soil and atmosphere is undoubtedly the primary cause 

 of such terrible disasters as the famines from which India periodically 

 suffers, and the best method of producing rain or moisture in abundance 

 is by far the most important question to be solved in the problem of how 

 to prevent the frequent occurrence of such direful calamities. The best 

 and only practicable method known by which that object can be attained 

 with a final certainty, is to iMnt trees, and to keep on planting, and en- 

 couraging the extension of the woods, especially in the higher regions of 

 the country, until such an extent of forest is produced as will restore 



