216 REPORT ON THE FORESTS OF INDIA. 



little villages, each with its few acres of cultivation and a claim 

 to grazing rights over a twentieth part of the forest. The conse- 

 quence is that any attempt to enclose a given area for the fostering 

 of natural reproduction is opposed, on the ground that that is the 

 grazing land of one village which has no grazing rights elsewhere. 

 But the State holds some forests free of all rights. This is 

 generally due to the fact that their immediate neighbourhood 

 was unsettled at a period shortly anterior to the constitution of 

 the Forest Department, in which case the district officers levied 

 grazing dues on cattle brought from a distance, in accordance with 

 old native custom ; and as cultivation encroached upon its con- 

 fines, they gave each village what was thought a sufficient grazing 

 area in the outside wastes, without encroaching on the better 

 forest area. These wastes may have long since passed under the 

 plough, compelling the people to resort to the forests for their 

 requirements ; but these requirements are paid for, and the forests 

 continue free of rights, but the area of such forests is not very 

 considerable. 



II. — Condition and Area of the State Forests. 



In all Indian social and economic problems, present and future, 

 the most vital factor is the increase of population, inaugurated by 

 British rule, and the problem of forest management is by no means 

 an exception. The predominant feature of an Indian landscape 

 while population was at a stand-still, was villages with their sur- 

 rounding fields dotted all over a sparsely timbered jungle, with 

 generally a dense mango grove near every village. 



"With spread of population the fields encroached upon the jungle. 

 There was necessarily no lack of fuel and timber during this pro- 

 cess, and the Government, free from anxiety that such a lack was 

 threatening, and finding its revenues increased by every fresh acre 

 broken up, stimulated the process, and kept far ahead of the wants 

 of the people by holding out every inducement to capitalists, 

 native and European, to take up the better timbered forests for 

 cultivation. Land was valued in inverse proportion to the 

 quantity of timber on it ; and first-class forest, carrying timber 

 which would now be worth £100 an acre standing, was, twenty 

 years ago, given away at an annual assessment of sixpence an acre, 

 payable only on the area which it was stipulated should be cleared 

 annually. After supplying local requirements the timber thus 



