Forestry in India 625 



another part of his native province or to another province of India, 

 even though bountiful paddy fields have already been proved 

 there, settled government established and railroads laid down for 

 easy transport. 



The Indian will assuredly cut down the forest bordering his 

 field and village if allowed, but he will not migrate to attack a new 

 forest area. Nearly every province contains a fair proportion of 

 forest, some of it seemingly on good agricultural land and only a 

 hundred miles or so from districts so densely populated that to 

 use Kipling's description of Canton you feel that if you knocked a 

 comer off a house it would bleed. Other provinces, rich beyond 

 dreams, in the capacity for growth of myriad crops, such as Assam 

 and Burma, lying in the direct Hne between the hordes of China 

 and the swarms of India to this day cry aloud for population and 

 all through the past have suffered little or no forest destruction. 

 A large proportion of the forest wealth of India is in these two 

 provinces. If they are omitted the forest in India sinks to 21 per 

 cent of the land area. One should be permitted to dream a 

 moment what would be the situation in North America today if 

 we had possessed only a little of the Indian's characteristic of paus- 

 ing to make each acre fertile before passing on to denude another. 

 We should have been still somewhere East of the Appalachians 

 and the beaver would not yet have been driven out of Canadian 

 rivers to take refuge in the folds of the flag. 



Forest Distribution and Ownership 



The proportion of forest area in various provinces is given 

 below: 



Area of Per cent Population 



Area of State of Forest in per Square 



Province Province Forest Land Area Mile, 1911 



Burma 224,854 141,443 62.9 44 



Assam 48,915 22,782 46.6 139 



Central Province 99,876 19,684 19 . 7 139 



Madras 142,402 19,665 13.8 291 



Bombay 123,316 12,242 9.9 159 



Bengal 78,875 10,612 13.5 577 



Punjab 96,650 8,314 8.6 207 



United Provinces 106,773 4,193 3.9 440 



Behar and Orissa 83,673 2,785 3.4 415 



Andamans 3,143 2,209 70.3 8 



Baluchistan 54,228 785 1.4 8 



Coorg 1,582 520 32.9 111 



Northwest Frontiers 13,184 236 1.8 166 



Ajmer 2,767 142 5.1 181 



British India 1,079,638 245,612 22.7% 226 



