Forestry in India 641 



The yearly repair bill is half the cost of new construction. The 

 Indian will not biiild a road to take timber out ; he would rather 

 go without the timber. The Forest Service, if it is to sell the 

 timber, excepting in the isolated instances where large companies 

 are working, must first build the road. Roads built for extraction, 

 inspection paths and trails, which are very numerous and the travel 

 routes of the native tribes living in many of the forests render 

 Indian forests very accessible indeed, at least as judged by Cana- 

 dian standards. The yearly expenditure on roads is from $145,000 

 to $263,000, of which about two-thirds is for new construction. 

 Forest engineering is an important part of the training for both 

 the rangers and men of the Provincial Service. It is doubtful 

 if, as at present trained, the average forester in North America 

 could produce as creditable an engineering showing as results 

 from the daily work of the Indian Forest Service. It is also doubt- 

 ful if the foresters now trained in the forest schools of Great 

 Britain will do as well in this respect as those who came from 

 Cooper's Hill. 



There are few if any points of resemblance between forest 

 protection in India and America. Protection against trespass is 

 more of a problem in India than fire protection. 



The total number of breaches of forest regulations in India in 

 1913 to 1914 was 94,390, classified as follows: 



Timber trespass 50,899 



Grazing trespass 33,938 



Injury by fire 4,012 



Others 5,541 



The density and lack of morality of the poptilation, the difficulty 

 of detection, and to a certain extent the fact that protection 

 against trespass is largely in the hands of Indian members of the 

 service renders the preservation of the forest against the popula- 

 tion exceedingly difficult. Not even the settlement of rights by 

 grants of forest land in which villagers are free to cut, the leaving 

 of strips of forest outside the reserved boundaries, the granting 

 of free use of forest produce and grazing valued at $2,500,000 

 yearly serves to stem the tide of trespassers. The convictions 

 secured against offenders, 174,084 persons convicted in the 83,064 

 convictions secured out of the 84,170 cases settled in 1914 to 

 1915, should discourage offenders, but evidently does not. It is 

 easy to see that when almost 100,000 trespass cases yearly, all 



