DR CLEGHORN's services TO INDIAN FORESTRY, 89 



About the time that Captain Cotton first drew attention to the 

 Anamalai Forests, Dr Cleghorn was stationed as an Assistant- 

 Surgeon at Shimoga, in the Nuggur Division of Mysore. Being 

 interested in botany and a keen observer, he remarked the 

 ■wholesale destruction of forests in that district, chiefly through 

 " Kumri" cultivation. It was mainly through his representations 

 that the attention of Sir Mark Cabbon, then Commissioner of 

 Mysore, and of Colonel Onslow, the Superintendent of the Nuggar 

 Division of that State, was drawn to the necessity of Forest 

 Conservancy. Dr Cleghorn's name is mentioned in a Report on 

 the Conservation of Forests, which the last-named ofiicer sub- 

 mitted to the Commissioner in May 1847.^ In consequence of 

 this report and of Dr Cleghorn's representations, Kumri cultiva- 

 tion was stopped in the greater part of Mysore and Coorg ; and 

 in 1868, while on a tour of inspection through these districts, 

 the writer of this note had the satisfaction of seeing large tracts 

 of country clothed with well-stocked young forests, which had 

 grown up on the old Kumri clearings. 



In 1 850, the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 

 at their Edinburgh meeting, appointed a Committee to consider 

 the probable effects, in an economical and physical point of view, 

 of the destruction of tropical forests. The report was drawn up 

 by Dr Cleghorn, and was submitted to the Association, which 

 assembled at Ipswich in 1851. The other members of the Com- 

 mittee were : Professor Forbes Eoyle, Captain R. Baird Smith, 

 and Captain (now Lieutenant-General) R. Strachey. This report 

 gave an exhaustive review of the question as it then stood, and 

 as far as it related to India, and it contributed much to induce 

 influential membei-s of Government in India and at home, seriously 

 to consider the necessity of organising systematic measures of 

 Forest Conservancy in India. 



In the Bengal Presidency it was Lord Dalhousie himself who, 

 as Governor-General of India, carried through effective measures 

 for the conservation of forests, chiefly in the newly-acquired pro- 

 vince of Pegu ; while in Madras Lord Harris took steps in the 

 same direction. In August 1856, Dr Cleghorn submitted a 

 report to the Government of Madras, containing proposals for 

 establishing Forest Conservancy. These proposals were sent up to 

 the Government of India for sanction, which was accorded in 



1 Eeport of the Twenty-First Meeting of the British Association held at 

 Ipswich in July 1851, p- 83. 



