NOTES ON INDIAN FORESTRY IN 1906. 225 
for use in the dry season, and flood low-lying tracts throughout 
the lower courses of the rivers. But the important work of 
distributing the water-supply by canals, dams, tanks and wells is 
comparatively easy if rivers, streams and springs flow per- 
manently and equably. Even if the protection and efficiency of 
large distribution works is alone considered, forest conservancy 
measures will, wherever this is possible, in future ensure a more 
regular and even supply of water to such works. 
The great rivers of India are fed by the glaciers and snows of 
the Himalayas or trans-Himalayan tracts, while smaller catch- 
ment-areas are dependent on rainfall. It might be supposed that 
the flow of the glacier-born rivers is beyond man’s control; but 
this is not so, for it has been proved that the catchment-area in 
the hills between the snows and the plains is that part of a river’s 
course which should receive the most careful attention, because 
this is the area within which forests can prevent avalanches 
and torrents, and can store up a large proportion of the 
waters, to give them off gradually in perennial springs and 
streams. From the permanent snow-level to the upper tree-limit 
no protection is needed to control the course of the Himalayan 
rivers; but from this point onwards the influence of rainfall 
becomes all the more important with decreasing elevation above 
the sea-level—the rainfall being generally heaviest from the 
7000 feet contour-line to the foot of the hills. At the top a stiff 
shrubby growth of dwarf rhododendrons and juniper forms an~ 
effective surface-covering. Close below are the birch forests ; 
and below these the pines, firs and cedars forming dense forests ; 
while lower still the pines ahd oaks merge gradually into the 
broad-leaved woods clothing the lower slopes leading down to 
the plains. If left untouched, this protective belt ensures an 
equable flow of the water down to these plains; and there can be 
no doubt that the lowering of the water-level in the great rivers, 
the drying up of springs, the covering of fertile agricultural lands 
with mountain débris, and the destruction of villages, towns and 
fields by disastrous floods, have been mainly due to the rash 
clearance of the primeval forest covering of the mountain slopes. 
Among numerous examples taken all over the country, Mr Wilmot 
quotes, in proof of this, one of the latest examples, and one 
peculiar in its way, which occurred in the summer of 1905 in 
connection with the Cauvery river, the water-level of which was 
reduced below the lowest estimates on which the Mysore electric 
