6G0 JOURNAL, BOMBAY NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETY, Vol. XII. 



becomes the Forest question. In a hot country, with distinct wet and 

 dry seasons, forests may be necessary for the mitigation of extreme 

 heat and dryness during a part of the year, and for the regulation of 

 the flow of water in springs and rivers. The climate of a Continental 

 country may be improved by forests ; and a mountainous region is, 

 according to the same authority, more in need of forests than a low- 

 lying country, because forests tend to prevent landslips and avalanches 

 and the washing away of soil from hill sides and the consequent silting 

 up of rivers. Also they check the force and suddenness of destructive 

 floods. In hilly countries, as elsewhere, forests provide protection 

 from storms for men and beasts and birds. 



Now India is distinctly a hot country, though in the Northern pro- 

 vinces extreme cold is also felt in winter. It possesses, over a great part 

 of its area, well defined wet and dry seasons, dependent on constant 

 causes recurring from year to year with the process of the sun above 

 and below the equator. Except on the sea- coast, it possesses a contin- 

 ental climate, or rather several types of continental climate ; and 

 though there are vast plains within its boundaries, it is intersected by 

 many mountain ranges, and even its plains and table-lands are broken 

 by isolated hills and hilly tracts. It is a land in which it would be 

 suicidal to neglect the great question of Forest Conservancy. 



And yet it is only during the past 50 years that the vital importance 

 of the question has been realized in British India. Early in the pre- 

 sent century, a timber agency was indeed established on the West coast ; 

 and, in 1839-40 the Government of Bombay prohibited the cutting of 

 teak trees on State lauds. In 1843, Mr. Conolly, the Collector of 

 Malabar, made extensive plantations of teak at Nilambur ; but no sys- 

 tematic plan for the maintenance of wooded lands for the supply of 

 timber and other produce, or on account of their beneficial influence 

 on the climate and public health, or for the protection of the soil or 

 human dwellings from the violence of storms, and, in short, no plan 

 for the regular administration of forests on well ascertained principles 

 was adopted till several years afterwards, when the danger of con- 

 tinued neglect could no longer be concealed. 



There can be no question that, at one time, a very large part of the 

 earth's surface was covered by forest growth, the destruction of which 

 has been followed by momentous consequences to the drainage of the 



