206 ADDRESS BY THE PRESIDENT, NOVEMBER 4, 1874. 



economy of the country." About the time this was written (1850), 

 the Government of India began to be seriously embarrassed by the 

 scarcity of timber ; its attention was directed to the management of 

 the indigenous forests, and as you are aware a special department 

 has been organised within the last twenty years in that great 

 empire, charged with the care of the wood, and a considerable 

 number of trained assistants have been sent out, who are intro- 

 ducing correct principles of management. As the administration 

 of the forests advanced, the want of hand-books to enable officers 

 to accpiire a knowledge of the trees, shrubs, climbers, &c, in their 

 ranges was increasingly felt, and nothing perhaps indicates so 

 clearly the growing importance of that department, as the almost 

 simultaneous appearance of two illustrated works of great value on 

 the trees of India, published lately under the auspices of Govern- 

 ment. These are Stewart and Brandis' " Forest Flora of Xorth-TVest, 

 and Central India," and Beddome's " Flora Sylvatica of Southern 

 India." A forest flora of British Burma by S. Kurz, Curator of Her- 

 barium at Calcutta, is now in preparation. These three books 

 comprise descriptions of most trees, a knowledge of which is needful 

 to foresters in British India. 



On a former occasion, I alluded to the diversified duties falling 

 to the lot of a forester in India, and to the fact that his range of 

 observation is wider than that of a forester in Britain. It should 

 also be borne in mind, that owing to the ease with which books of 

 reference are obtained in this country, you have the advantage over 

 him. The European forester has to deal with comparatively few 

 trees, and trustworthy information on all of these is readily pro- 

 cured. The forester in India, on the contrary, has to do with perhaps 

 a couple of hundred trees and shrubs yielding timber and various 

 minor products, as dyes, fibres, oils, gums, &c, but he has been 

 without the means of finding out the value of the products around 

 him, except by the purchase of costly and rare books. His forest 

 range may be in great part uninhabited, and even in well peopled 

 districts only partial information is to be obtained — products which 

 are collected and give profitable returns in one range being unknown 

 or neglected in others, as, for example, the Catechu and the Sappan. 

 Again, Gun-Una arbprea, which occurs in almost all the forests of 

 South India, is appreciated as yielding valuable timber in one or 

 two districts, but is supposed to be of little or no value in others. 

 Many such instances might be given. 



As l)r Brandi- states in the preface to his " Forest Flora" (p. ix.), 



