76 TRANSACTIONS OF ROVAL SCOTTISH ARBORICULTURAL SOCIETY. 



there is plenty of room for storage and labour is cheap, tanners 

 appear to prefer bark (of a good quality) to extract. At any 

 rate that was the impression made on my mind when, a few 

 years ago, I was on special duty in this connection at Cawnpore 

 in India. Cawnpore is a large tanning centre, with several big 

 tanneries, where some 60,000 tons of bark (nearly the whole 

 being Babul bark. Acacia arabica) are annually used, and the 

 country for a hundred miles along the railways is ransacked 

 for this bark, for which about is. 4d. to is. 6d. a maund (82 lbs.) 

 is paid. AI. Melard thinks that the present depreciation of 

 oak bark may not last ; the chestnut forests are probably 

 being destroyed, and as for Quebracho, that species is a native 

 of the Argentine, where there does not appear to be forest 

 protection, without which the largest forest area will in time 

 be destroyed, and that far quicker than is generally realised. 

 Moreover, Quebracho wood is suitable for sleepers, and the 

 great development of the Argentine will connote a great 

 extension of railways. Also the influx of immigrants will go 

 far towards the destruction of the forests. There are, however, 

 some slight compensations to be had for the fall in the sale of 

 the oak bark. The tendency to grow oak as coppice will 

 decrease, and it is a sin not to grow such a timber-tree as oak 

 to large dimensions, and with long boles fit for beams, in high 

 forest. Also the necessity for felling the tree only when the sap 

 is rising disappears. 



M.M. Gallois and Buffault write on the difficulties of fire 

 conservancy in the Maures et I'Estorel, in the south of France, 

 where the fires are bad, the same difficulties applying to the pine 

 forests of Gascony. They speak chiefly of the inertness of 

 private proprietors in protecting their woods, which are mostly 

 either cork-oak, or pine. The fact is the proprietors fear the 

 expense of making fire-lines, and, when it is a case of completely 

 clearing the lines of all trees, the direct loss. There is a law of 

 1893 which forbids fires being lit within 200 metres of the 

 woods during the summer ; permits a proprietor to make a 

 border fire-line, cleared of all brushwood and all resinous trees, 

 and then to force his neighbour to do the same ; obliges all 

 railways which traverse a wood to keep up similar cleared lines ; 

 and grants a certain subvention for constructing roads across 

 the woods. In Britain, most fortunately, we are not greatly 

 troubled with fire, but danger sometimes occurs from burning 



