454 The Journal of Forestry. 



under improved and systematic management. In concluding our 

 present remarks, we cannot but note the small amount of the produce 

 of full-sized timber, and the very limited expenditure upon planting, 

 renewing, and the improvement of the woods and plantations, upon 

 which subjects we shall have something to say at a future time. 



Our attention has been directed to a letter in a recent issue of the 

 Times, in which Mr. Elliot, Clifton Park, Kelso, strongly condemns 

 the reckless and ill-judged manner in which the conservation of the 

 forests of our Indian Empire is conducted, and calling emphatically upon 

 the Government to take proper and efficient means for thoroughly pro- 

 tecting the forests still remaining, and to see that they are judiciously 

 and economically managed, and also to see that the raising and plant- 

 ing of trees throughout India is stimulated and encouraged wherever 

 it is found they are necessary for the amelioration of the climate, the 

 production of fuel, or for use in the arts and constructive economy. 



The evidence in support of Mr. Elliot's impeachment of the neglect 

 and bad management of the Indian forests by the Government is far 

 too plentiful and clear to be easily refuted or denied, and now that 

 one of the results of the indiscriminate sweeping away of the natural 

 forests is being so strikingly manifested in the dire famine which 

 threatens to decimate the teeming population of Southern India, it is 

 high time that public attention was directed to the subject. 



That the aridity and want of rain in many districts is directly 

 attributable to the absence of trees or forests is now well known to 

 be an indisputable fact. Many large tracts on the face of the earth, 

 which have been clean swept of their clothing of primeval forest by the 

 hands of careless or avaricious man, or by other causes equally fatal 

 are now dry parched deserts, in which it is impossible to find upon 

 the surface of their vast and dreary area a moist spot sufficient to 

 produce even a single green blade of grass. On the other hand, it 

 has been practically demonstrated and clearly proved that the plant- 

 ing of trees in a proper and judicious manner in districts which were 

 previously destitute of them, and which in their treeless state were 

 totally unfit for cultivation or for the production of food for man or 

 beast, have been rendered thereby not only more healthy and habit- 

 able, but also under a proper system of good cultivation have been 

 rendered highly productive of the crops peculiar to the country ; in the 

 production of which favourable change the trees have played by far 

 the most important part, by their shade and power of softening the 

 blast, and the influence they possess of attracting clouds and condensing 



