FORESTRY EDUCATION : ITS IMPORTANCE AND REQUIREMENTS. 33 



mostly settled out of court. Encroachments on the Government 

 reserve boundaries were more important. Wholesale stealing of 

 large logs or dug-outs (boats), which were floated down from the 

 forests to the revenue stations on all the large rivers (the rivers 

 form the chief roads of this part of the world), there to be 

 assessed, was rife— the Government marks being removed, which 

 made the offence a serious criminal one. During the monsoon 

 months, on dark, rainy nights, when the rivers were out in flood, 

 and went roaring past the revenue station at twenty miles an 

 hour, was the favourite time for such work. Once past the 

 station all was fairly plain sailing. Every village on the river bank 

 was implicated in this sort of thing. Tanks (small ponds) are 

 as plentiful as plums in a cake in this part of the world, and the 

 logs were taken from the river and sunk in these tanks where, 

 safely hidden beneath the thick coating of slimy weeds which 

 covered their surface, they could remain till the Day of Judgment 

 without being discovered ! The grave nature of these offences, 

 when they could be brought home to the offender, usually means 

 days on the bench beside the magistrate, explaining the intricacies 

 of Indian forest law, if one is to make sure of obtaining a necessary 

 and salutary conviction. The inspection of these revenue 

 stations is also heavy work. In the busy season, several miles 

 of rafts would be moored off them, consisting of logs of some 

 scores of different species of timber, dug-outs, thousands of 

 bamboos, canes, and a large variety of the minor products of 

 the forest, all of which had to be checked and assessed by the 

 station officers. Men capable of undertaking such work require 

 a good preparatory training, and the man required to check 

 their work must have a higher one. Other days will have to be 

 spent inspecting the boundary lines of the Government reserves. 

 The forest officer is entirely responsible for his boundaries, 

 which may run into hundreds of miles. He must see that thev 

 are yearly cleared, and that his pillars or boundary posts are all 

 standing in their proper positions. If he thinks any have been 

 removed, he will have to check the bearings with theodolite and 

 compass. Should he fail to do this, and allow a boundary 

 to get into disrepair, so that it is not plainly discernible to the 

 villagers, a prosecution for trespass or for cultivation illicitly 

 encroaching on the boundary (a common habit of the villagers) 

 will assuredly fail when carried into court, and will be 

 followed by an outcrop of such offences. At another time, in 



VOL. XXIV. PART I. C 



