ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, NOVEMBEB 0, 1872. O 



200,000,000 of people distributed in many parts more thickly than 

 in Lancashire or the country round Glasgow, and in which but few 

 Europeans, and probably not one native, have ever eaten a meal 

 cooked with coal, a fuel famine has for years been impending. The 

 introduction into India of railways, and the rapidly increased demand 

 for timber for sleepers and fuel, at length forced the attention of the 

 Government to the vital question of forest management. 



In the year 1856, when engaged in multifarious duties as a 

 medical practitioner and Professor of Botany in the medical college 

 of Madras, I was unexpectedly called upon to organise a forest 

 service, and to take charge of the forests in south India, a territory 

 three or four times as large as Great Britain. I had had no training 

 in my youth specially to fit me for such a duty; but the need was 

 urgent, and trained foresters were not to be had; if they had been 

 available, the want of the language and ignorance of the habits and 

 products of the country would have rendered them comparatively 

 useless. It is true that at the time I was engaged in teaching 

 botany, to which I had long devoted much attention, and in my 

 youth I had been accustomed to rural life in Scotland, circumstances 

 which were all in my favour. "When, with considerable misgivings, 

 I undertook the duty, the natural forests in most parts of the 

 country had been ruthlessly wasted by felling and burning, and no 

 system had been adopted to regulate the cutting, or to provide for 

 the Avants of future generations by preserving existing forests or 

 forming new plantations. Magnificent trees were sacrificed for in- 

 significant purposes, and planks were not sawn, but hewn with an 

 axe, one tree furnishing a single plank. The State therefore stepped 

 in to arrest the waste, and to adopt measures for husbanding the 

 resources for present use, and for the supply of posterity. In course 

 of time, after preliminary explorations and valuation surveys, the 

 country was divided into districts, each of them as large, many of 

 them larger, than Perthshire, and placed under the charge of one 

 assistant conservator or forest ranger. 



My duties for twelve years necessitated much and rapid travelling 

 in order to become acquainted with the forests over which I had 

 been called to exercise some control. These forests are scattered 

 over a great extent of country, sometimes dotted here and there in 

 small patches, seldom in compact masses. My duties were to ascer- 

 tain the proprietary rights (if any existed), or rights of pasturage, 

 which wandering tribes possess, to mark out the first class forests 

 to be reserved by Government, to separate the tracts attached to 



