INTERNATIONAL FORESTRY EXHIBITION. 73 
India. 
The magnificent exhibits from our great Indian Empire, both 
in respect to scientific and practical value, received from visitors 
that amount of attention they so well deserved. They formed a 
pleasing illustration to arboriculturists in this country of the 
progress of the science in India, where its application was so 
much needed, and in which it has so wide a field to work. The 
Department of Forestry, which was organised less than thirty 
years ago by the East India Company, in which the President of 
this Society, Dr Cleghorn, took a leading part, has now grown 
into a great State Department, whose work is exerting an amelio- 
rative influence on the climatic and physical conditions of the 
country. Not only are the splendid forests of India—the present 
reserved area being no less than 46,000 square miles in extent— 
systematically managed and made to yield a handsome revenue, 
but there are also extensive nurseries and plantations in which 
trees are raised for the afforesting of treeless districts. Tree 
planting is being pushed northwards and westwards towards the 
Afghanistan and Beloochistan frontiers, and it is most instructive 
to hear that, as a direct result of such operations, the rainfall in 
these arid lands is gradually increasing. Occupying the whole of 
the south-central transept and several bays on each side, the 
Indian Collection, which was under the care of Colonel Michael, 
was by far the largest and most valuable in the building. In- 
cluded in it was the Calcutta “ Index Collection” of Museum 
Specimens, alphabetically arranged, and including about 800 
examples of the trees of India, which grow in the vast territory be- 
tween Cape Comorin and the snow-capped Himalaya. The Bom- 
bay exhibits, consisting for the most part of sections of useful and 
ornamental woods, were chiefly remarkable for the skilful manner 
in which they had been cut so as to show the different grainings 
and qualities, and the appearance which the wood presented in a 
rough state and when dressed and varnished. The contribution 
from British Burmah included a number of grand bamboos 85 feet 
in length, and some splendid logs of teak (Zectona grandis), which 
there attains to a great size. Of unexcelled durability, the wood 
is largely exported to this country for ship and railway carriage 
building purposes ; and the uses to which it is put by the cabinet- 
maker and wood-carver were exemplified in beautiful carved panels 
