364 THE PRESIDENTIAL ADDRESS. [ Sess. LXx1. 
overtake the huge problem with which they were faced. The 
result was that in 1864 an organised State Department, 
presided over by Dr. Brandis as Inspector-General of Forests 
to the Government of India, was established, and a special 
forest law was passed. There are few things more interesting 
and instructive than the story of the Indian Forest Depart- 
ment, which has now under administration a forest area of 
239,000 square miles, or twice the area of Great Britain and 
Ireland. The staff consists of 200 English officers and 
11,000 native officials, and the revenue has risen from 
£40,000 in 1864 to £660,000 in 1904. Owing to the 
unfortunate lack of suitable facilities for practical forestry 
training in Great Britain, Dr. Brandis obtained permission in 
1866 for the training of young British foresters at the French 
School of Forestry at Nancy and in Germany. In 1885 a 
British Forest School was instituted at the Royal Indian 
Engineering College at Coopers Hill, and now there is a 
forestry school at Oxford. In 1874 Brandis published his 
“ Forest Flora of North-West and Central India,’ which 
received the high commendation of Sir Joseph Hooker, and 
led to Dr. Brandis being elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. 
He also compiled the first rainfall map of India. 
He retired from the Indian Service in 1883, and from 
1888 to 1896 superintended the practical instruction of the 
Coopers Hill forest students in Germany. He also super- 
vised in the same way the forestry training of a number of 
Americans, who have since established the Government 
Forest Department which is destined to have a vast influence 
on forest conservancy in the United States. His services 
in this connection were specially acknowledged by President 
Roosevelt, and in a presentation of silver service by the 
officers of the United States Forestry Department he is 
spoken of as “the father of forestry in the United States.” 
There can be no doubt it was his privilege to successfully 
inaugurate the first great scheme of forestry conservancy in 
the British Empire, and the example is one that might well 
be followed in all the colonies. It is alleged, for example, 
that the immense forest wealth of the great Dominion of 
Canada is in danger of irreparable damage from the reckless 
destruction of timber trees without any systematic scheme 
for replanting the depleted areas. With the rapid opening 
