32 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



use in blinking facts. The responsibility rests solely with the 

 forester in charge of the woods and nowhere else. If the 

 forester has received an efficient training, he will have studied 

 this branch of his profession under able specialists, and will have 

 been shown as a student how to recognise the first beginnings 

 of such attacks. He goes to his duties then, properly equipped, 

 and if he neglects to report a bad plague before it is devastating 

 his woods, he is failing in his duty to his employer. I speak as 

 a practical forester myself who has had personal experience in 

 this direction, for I have seen serious damage done in Europe, as 

 well as in India (grave damage is being done at the present 

 moment here in Scotland), which could have, in great part, 

 been avoided, had those responsible possessed the necessary 

 training to enable them to recognise what was taking place 

 when it first began. 



It may be asked, but what are the duties of the forest officer 

 when you have turned out this highly-trained product? They 

 will, of course, vary with the country he is serving in, with the 

 character of his woods, with the reasons for which those woods 

 are kept up, in fact with the thousand and one conditions which 

 go to make up that whole — the work of a forester, one of the 

 most varied and interesting occupations in existence to the lover 

 of the open air and of nature. It may, perhaps, be of advantage 

 to dwell briefly on a few pages from the diary of a forester in 

 India, as they sum up duties which a forester will find awaiting 

 him wherever he serves. 



That tract of country in Eastern Bengal situated between 

 Calcutta and Burma contains a wonderful variety of different 

 kinds of forest, from mangrove swamps along the seaboard to 

 hills of pure bamboo, alternating with a scrubby jungle growth, 

 giving place to fine, dense, tropical forests in the mountainous 

 ranges of the Chittagong Hill Tracts and Lushai Hills. A 

 veritable botanist's paradise these dense forests, accessible 

 only to small boats poling up stream, for there are no roads, and 

 the whole of the forest produce is floated out. With the varied 

 nature of the forests, and a dense population in the flat lands 

 adjacent to the seaboard, come a variety of occupations, includ- 

 ing a goodly proportion of the most harassing of a forest 

 officer's duties — Court work. Pilfering of a few bamboos and 

 head loads of sticks, or illicit grazing of cattle within the forest 

 boundaries, was constant. These were minor ofi"ences, hov ever. 



