THE PROPOSED SCHOOL OF FORESTRY. 69 



What I have said regarding the peculiar difficulties in this 

 respect of forest administration in India, I intend should serve as 

 an introduction to the main subject of my present address. My 

 wish is, on the present occasion, to submit to your Society the 

 views which I have formed regarding the proposal to establish a 

 Forest School in Scotland, a proposal which I desire at the outset 

 to state has my warmest sympathy. What had to be done in 

 India, before the Government could undertake measures for the 

 permanent good management of the forests, was first to determine 

 which ai'eas were the property of the State ; and secondly, to free 

 these areas of the customary rights of user with which they were 

 burdened, or where this was not feasible, to define the extent of 

 such rights, and to regulate the exercise of them. This work, 

 which you will admit was indispensable, is in progress in most 

 districts of the vast British Empire, and though it is and must be 

 carried out to a great extent by the civil and judicial officers of 

 government, yet it cannot be accomplished without the co-opera- 

 tion of the forest officers. Hence you will understand that these 

 gentlemen have to deal with questions altogether difierent from 

 those with which wood-managers and foresters have to deal in 

 Scotland. And in other respects also the work of a forest officer 

 in India is very different from that of foresters in Europe. 



In the excellent lecture on the forests of India to which I 

 have already adverted. Sir Richard Temple gave you a true and 

 lively account of the forest fires, which in most disti'icts of India 

 are, and have from time immemorial been, an annual occurrence. 

 The season of spring, when the awakening of the vegetation in 

 Europe gladdens the hearts of men, in most parts of India is the 

 hottest time of the year. No rain, no dew, — the trees in most 

 forests leafless, — grass, herbage, and everything else dried up by 

 parching winds, and by the uninterrupted and relentless power of 

 a fierce and burning sun. The smallest spark suffices to light a 

 fire, which spreads over the grass lands and forests of entire 

 districts. The great injury which these fires do to forests in 

 India, has on several occasions been explained to your Society, 

 and I shall not dwell upon this subject on the present occasion. 

 It was mainly through the exertions of one of my old colleagues, 

 Colonel Pearson, whose name in connection with the Indian 

 Forest Service is familiar to you, that the first effective action on 

 a large scale for the suppression of these fires was taken in the 

 Central Provinces in 1864, where at that time he was Conservator 



