70 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



of Forests. The measures to protect the forests against these 

 annual fires form an important and often very difficult part of a 

 forest officer's duty in most provinces of India, This work, 

 which during the hot season is extremely laborious and trying to 

 health, is happily not needed in Scotland. Again, in the drier 

 districts of India one of the chief aims of forest management is to 

 increase the supply of fodder for cattle, particularly during 

 seasons of drought. But time presses : I must be satisfied with a 

 bare mention of this most impoitant feature of Indian Forestry, 

 and must give uj) the idea of entering fiu'ther into this branch of 

 the subject. 



The main point of difference between the work of a forester in 

 Scotland and that of a forest officer in India, consists in the vast 

 area of the Indian forests, and in the magnitude of the operations 

 involved in the management of these estates. You are aware 

 that those forests in the British Indian Empii-e, which are the 

 property of the State, and which have been either freed of 

 customary rights of xisex", or in which these rights have been 

 defined and settled, are called " reserved State forests." There 

 are other forests, over which the Government exercises a certain 

 control, more or less efiective according to circumstances, but on 

 the present occasion I shall limit myself to the reserved forests. 

 Well, their area, according to official documents, on the 1st April 

 1885, amounted to neai'ly 50,000 square miles, or 32 millions of 

 acres, all the property of Government, and managed by Govern- 

 ment officers. You will at once understand that for the protection 

 and management of so large an area, a very large staff of officers, 

 numbering many thousands, are employed, and that nearly the 

 whole of these are and must as a matter of course be natives of 

 India. Among these again there are, as you can readily imagine, 

 superior and suborbinate officers, and in order to give candidates 

 for the superior native forest service the needful professional 

 education, a Forest School was established in 1878 at Dehra Dun in 

 Northern India. Of this Forest School I am glad to see you have 

 in the last volume of your Transactions an excellent account 

 by Colonel F. Bailey of the Eoyal Engineers, who, after having 

 organised the Indian Forest Survey, became the first Director of 

 the School, and Conservator of the extensive forests attached to 

 it for the practical instruction of the students. At this school, 

 my former colleagues tell me, there are now about sixty young 

 men from all parts of British India, Hindus, Mahomedans, 



