ON THE DISTRIBUTION OF FORESTS IN INDIA. 1 03 



been neglected in India. The splendid table-land of the Neil- 

 gherries, which is raised 7000 feet above the hot plains, is in places 

 getting rapidly covered with forests of exotic trees. From Australia 

 several kinds of Eucalyptus and Acacia were introduced about 

 twenty-five years ago, and they have made such progress that the 

 station of Ootacamund is now almost surrounded by a forest of 

 these trees. Their rate of growth is wonderfully fast, much faster 

 than that of the indigenous trees. At the same time, young forests 

 of the quinine-yielding Cinchonas are coming up in many places. 

 The management of these Cinchona woods will probably be similar 

 to the treatment of oak coppice in England ; for though oak bark 

 has not one-twentieth the value of Jesuit's bark, it is the bark in 

 both cases for which these woods are mainly cultivated. There 

 will, however, be that difference, that while oak coppice in Europe, 

 after having been cut over, requires from fourteen to twenty years 

 to yield another crop of bark, Cinchonas appear to grow so rapidly 

 that they may probably be cut over every eighth or tenth year. 

 Eever is the great scourge and calamity of India, for natives as well 

 as for Europeans. Cinchona bark, and more so pure quinine, are 

 the only effective remedies, and, if they were less expensive, millions 

 in India would be benefited by them. The natural forests of the 

 more valuable kinds in South America are approaching exhaustion. 

 Experience has sufficiently proved that some of the most valuable 

 species succeed well on the Neilgherries, in Ceylon, and on the lower 

 hills of British Sikkim, and that they yield an abundance of quinine. 

 But the localities where the best kinds can be grown in India 

 are limited, and it would be well if as much of the available area as 

 possible were planted with Cinchonas. It has been said that India 

 owes more to the Portuguese than to any other nation in the matter 

 of plants and trees introduced from abroad, and certainly the papaya, 

 guava, custard-apple, cactus, pine-apple, and agave, all naturalised 

 more or less directly through their agency, bear testimony, in almost 

 all parts of India, to the skill and activity of the early Portu- 

 guese settlers. On the other hand, it is due entirely to British 

 enterprise and energy that the Coffee tree, which was introduced 

 about a hundred years ago by a Mussulman saint from Arabia into 

 South India, and first cultivated on the Bababooden hills, in Mysore, 

 is now grown in numerous extensive w r ell-managed plantations ; 

 that Tea, the existence of which in India was hardly known forty 

 years ago, has become an important, annually-increasing article of 

 export; and, lastly, that the Cinchona tree was successfully intro- 



