174 TRANSACTIONS OF ROYAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



24. The Silviculture of Indian Trees. 



By Sir George Watt, M.B., CM., F.L.S., CLE., LL.D. 



The Indian Forest Department may be said to have started 

 from very humble beginnings. A few officers were piclced out 

 from other branches of the public service and entrusted with 

 the organisation of a forest department. They were successful. 

 The department they formed has since so expanded that to-day 

 it may be said that one-fourth of the areas of India and Burma 

 are under its direct control. 



A Forest Research Institution, and also a College, have been 

 established at Dehra Dun, in the United Provinces, where 

 courses of study and research have been arranged as follows : — 

 (a) Silviculture ; (^) Forest Botany • (c) Forest Economic 

 Products ; (d) Forest Zoology ; and (e) Forest Chemistry. 

 Experts are also specially engaged to carry out investigations 

 into subjects of economic and commercial importance, such as 

 the supply from the forests of paper half-stuffs, or the provision 

 of useful tanning materials. The practical results of Forest 

 Research are, from time to time, published in the form of 

 bulletins, memoirs and records, so that the public are placed in 

 full possession of all the discoveries made. Since the date 

 when Sir Joseph Hooker completed his immense undertaking, 

 T/te Flora of British India, there have been published local 

 floras of practically every province of India as also an extensive 

 series of forest floras, so that the literature of the forests of India 

 has made great progress, and I think we are justified in includ- 

 ing Professor R. S. Troup's great work,i which has just appeared, 

 among the publications of the Forest Department of India and 

 of its Research Institution. 



The Silviculture of Lidian Trees is a truly monumental work, 

 the appearance of which must be regarded as marking a new 

 era in Indian forestry. For years to come it will remain the 

 standard that every student of Indian forestry must constantly 

 consult and amplify by further investigations. It is a mine of 

 personal exploration and of most painstaking research. It is, 

 therefore, in no spirit of cavilling with minor details that I 



1 The Silviculture of hidian Trees, by R. S. Troup, M.A. , CLE., in three 

 volumes, published under the authority of His Majesty's Secretary of State 

 for India in Council, by the Clarendon Press of Oxford. Price, ;^5, 5s. 



