NOTES ON INDIAN FORESTRY IN 1906. 221 
Indian Forest Service has, naturally, been attracting much 
attention among Indian forest officers, and especially since the 
issue of the Government Regulation of June 5, 1906, converting 
the Dehra Din School into an Imperial Forest Research Institute 
and College (see Vol. XX. Part I. pp. 115-117). This institution, 
maintained since 1878 for the training of subordinate officers 
(rangers and foresters) for the various Provincial Services, has 
now been transformed into a place where technical instruction 
and scientific research are combined. The lectures are hence- 
forth to be given entirely in English, the lower vernacular classes 
for foresters being thus abolished, and each of the six research 
officers is to give a course of lectures in his own special branch. 
This will not interfere with the research work, as the lecture 
session is confined to the four rainy months (July to October), 
when in any case all the officers will be at headquarters. 
This arrangement is a decided improvement. When I was 
deputy director and chief instructor at Dehra Din in 1894, 
I had to lecture not only on Sylviculture, Management and 
Protection, and Utilisation of Produce, which were my own 
proper professional subjects, but had also (in the absence of the 
regular lecturer) to deliver a special course on Zoology, for which 
I felt myself little qualified. 
For the vernacular teaching of the lower subordinates 
(foresters and forest guards) the various Local Governments are 
now making the necessary provision. The first of such purely 
local Forest Training Schools was that proposed and organised 
by me (1895-97) whilst Conservator in Burma, and the second 
that at Coimbatore for Southern India, organised by Mr Gass, 
Conservator of the Southern Circle, Madras. 
The researches that can now be undertaken at the Research 
Institute and College will differ considerably from those questions 
with which the various European Experimental Stations are con- 
cerned, for the special problems requiring solution are of entirely 
different nature in the temperate and the tropical zones. And 
even in the different provinces of India (extending to over 
1,000,000 square miles), the forest questions vary considerably 
in many respects. That this work will be undertaken enthusi- 
astically is evident from the feeling of gratitude with which the 
Department has welcomed the Government Resolution :— 
The study of the injurious pests, both animal and vegetable, the chemistry 
of the widely varying soils and of the extremely numerous minor products of 
