466 DISPOSAL AND SALE OF WOOD. 



requirements cannot be safeguarded to the extent that is 

 desirable in regular forest management, even after specifying 

 most carefully the conditions of sale, and with the best possible 

 supervision. In extensive forests, and where the regenera- 

 tion and culture of a forest nowise depends on the mode of 

 utilisation (as in clear-cuttings), there is no objection to the 

 sale of standing trees. If, therefore, silvicultural considera- 

 tions do not intervene, it may be to the advantage of a forest- 

 owner to adopt this method temporarily under certain cir- 

 cumstances. Such circumstances are : persistent coalitions 

 of competitors at auctions and scarcity of labour, for wood- 

 merchants can often engage wood-cutters more cheaply than 

 the Forest Department. Since a wood-merchant with foremen 

 attached to his interests is more in touch with the whole 

 business than the distant and often impersonal forest-owner, 

 the felling, conversion and assortment of the produce of a 

 felling-area is effected with more zeal and skill, and some- 

 times a finer finish is given to what would otherwise be 

 merely rough conversion.* Finally, in the case of extra- 

 ordinary quantities of produce, owing to damage by storms, 

 insects, etc., when the trees may be considered as only 

 partially standing, it may be more advantageous to the owner 

 to sell the trees on the whole affected area to a wood-merchant, 

 than to convert it by the help of his own wood-cutters, and 

 sell the material by detail. 



As regards State forests and those belonging to corporate 

 bodies, the question between these two modes of sale has 

 another bearing. Generally the forest official should pay 

 maximum wages for felling, conversion and removal of the 

 wood. When, however, in State forests, from short-sighted 

 financial economy, wages are kept so low that even the 

 industrious wood-cutter can hardly earn a living wage, the 



* [In the Himalayan forests, export- works involving a large expenditure are 

 required in order to work the forests economically and profitably, and the trees 

 are converted into railway-sleepers or firewood : it has therefore proved 

 more profitable, after agreeing beforehand with a railway or the commissariat 

 department for the sale of the produce, to convert the trees depart mentally 

 rather than to sell them standing to purchasers, who are accustomed to work 

 out standing trees from forests of native chiefs without any silvicultural restric- 

 tions. Tr. j 



