224 REPORT ON THE FORESTS OF INDIA. 



plan operations on the basis of a big balance-sheet for the first 

 ten years, to be followed by a total cessation of income for another 

 thirty years, or by a serious reduction in the felling limit of 

 girth, I conceive it justifiable to work off" the mature timber 

 promptly, when it is required for important public works, even if 

 the demand should be in excess of the annual increment; but 

 while I am disposed to make little demur to the extent to which 

 exploitation is at present pushed, I think it a mistake that valua- 

 tion surveys have been so long delayed, and that the department 

 should be still working in the dark as to its resources. 



In the immediate future the drain upon the reserved forests 

 will be almost wholly as heretofore upon a few special classes of 

 timber, and of these I am of opinion that the mature crop is 

 rapidly tending towards exhaustion ; and between the period of 

 its exhaustion and the general exhaustion of the unreserved 

 forests, the financial position of the department will be less 

 flourishing than at present, excepting in one province, which I 

 forbear to name, in which the conservator has kept his opera- 

 tions probably widely within the capacities of his forests, while he 

 exerted himself to ascertain what those capacities really are. But 

 the interval between the exhaustion of the supply of mature 

 deodar, sal, and teak, and the exhaustion or extinction of the 

 unreserved forests, will hardly be a long one. Hitherto the 

 reserved forests have supplied but little timber, except for public 

 works and European buildings ; they will then be called upon to 

 meet the whole wants of the empire in fuel and timber, and 

 unless the unreserved forests be rapidly absorbed in the reserves, 

 our forests will be quite unequal to meet the demand upon them. 



That the bulk of the unreserved forests will be absorbed in the 

 reserves without serious opposition I cannot believe, for popula- 

 tion in many provinces of the empire is already trenching on the 

 limits of soil capacity, and in this problem are involved considera- 

 tions so vast that the importance of forest conservancy (indis- 

 pensable as it is to the well-being of the people) sinks into 

 insignificance in comparison. 



I have treated the subject from a very general point of view, so 

 as to afford a bird's-eye glance of the general condition and 

 prospects of Indian forestry. A more detailed account of the 

 labour of the department would doubtless be interesting, but 

 justice could not be done to the subject in a brief report. 



