REPORT ON THE FORESTS OF INDIA. 221 



already remarked, the bulk of the forest revenues are realised from 

 the sale of only a very few species of timber occupying but a 

 small percentage of the reserved area. The general crop of the 

 forests will not stand the cost of carriage to market, because 

 timbers of equal quality are obtainable from local unreserved 

 forests at a small cost, or when these fail, private forests and 

 mango groves are cut down and sold at rates which, although yield- 

 ing a fair return to the owners, would not cover cost of carriage 

 from State forests. The general need of land for extension of cul- 

 tivation encourages the continuance of the practice, and timber 

 and fuel being necessarily plentiful as long as a large proportion 

 of the capital stock of the imreserved forests is being annually 

 exploited in addition to the annual increment, no one appears to 

 foresee that the time is fast approaching when the remnant of the 

 unreserved forests, denuded of their timber, will have to be divided 

 between the people and the Forest Department, and the former be 

 brought into complete dependence on the latter for all their require- 

 ments in. timber and fuel. 



The clearances effected by the Forest Department in the early 

 years of its labours were followed by so irregular and imperfect a 

 measure of reproduction, and such promise of reproduction as then 

 was so frequently suffered destruction from jungle fires, that the 

 attention of the department was early directed to the formation of 

 plantations on suitable compact areas, where they could receive a 

 measure of supervision which could not be accorded to large forest 

 areas encumbered with rights ; but although to the practised 

 forester no branch of the profession is a more simple matter of 

 routine, with familiar trees and under the conditions in which he 

 has been trained, there is no branch of the labours of the Indian 

 Forest Department in which absence of success is more apparent. 

 The latest published estimates of the area and costs of the planta- 

 tions in. the several provinces of India, exclusive of Madras and 

 Bombay, are as follows : 



Acres. 



427 

 . 1,135 

 . 16,277 



351 

 , 2,493 



313 



455 



. 2,199 



2,338 



