THE PROPOSED SCHOOL OF FORESTRY. 67 



of the export trade and of manufacturing industries, and by the 

 steadily increasing well-being of all classes. Where the forests 

 had not been cleared to make way for the plough, most, and in 

 many places all, accessible timber fit to be used was cut and 

 brought away, to be consumed as fuel and chai-coal, to be used 

 for shipbuilding, for railway sleepers, or for house-building. The 

 gradual disappearance of the forests, and the deterioration of those 

 which remained, became alarming, and it began gradiially to be 

 acknowledged that action must be taken in the matter. The 

 Indian forest question had been brought before the British Asso- 

 ciation for the advancement of Science, at the Edinburgh meeting 

 of 1850, and a committee had been appointed by that meeting to 

 study the question, and to submit a report. Of the members of 

 that committee, two are still alive — your late President, Dr Hugh 

 Cleghorn, and General (then Captain) Richard Strachey, the 

 distinguished President of the Royal Geographical Society, who, 

 while Secretary to the Government of India, has done more than 

 any one to pave the way for a good organisation of the forest 

 business. Upon Dr Cleghorn devolved the duty of writing the 

 Report, which was submitted to the meeting of the British 

 Association in 1851. 



Previous to this, action had commenced in India in different 

 places. In 1842, Mr Conolly, the Collector of the district, com- 

 menced the magnificent Teak plantations of Xilambur in Malabar, 

 which for many years were in charge of a valued member of 

 your Society, John Ferguson, of whose death last year I was 

 grieved to hear. In 1847, General (then Captain) Frederick 

 Cotton drew the attention of the Government of INIadras to the 

 Anamalai Teak forests, and on his recommendation Lieutenant 

 (now General) James Michael, Companion of the Star of India 

 and an honorary member of your Society, was appointed, in 

 1848, to conduct the timber operations in those forests. About 

 the same time Dr Cleghorn, then Civil Surgeon of Shimoga in 

 Mysore, had represented to the civil authorities of that State 

 the evils resulting from the wholesale destruction of the foi'ests 

 through the shifting kumri cultivation, by cutting and burning 

 the forest, and it was mainly owing to his persistent repre- 

 sentations that this wasteful system of cultivation was put a 

 stop to in Mysore. In the Bombay Presidency, the late Dr 

 Gibson was appointed Conservator of Forests in 1847, and in the 

 Tenasserim province of Burma, which had become British territory 



