[ £3 ] 



a great deal could be done by the influence of the 

 local officials, but the power to act with or without 

 consent must be taken. 



In some places, Glovernment has plenty of land of 

 its own which it could plant up, but this is almost 

 exclusively in thinly populated and imperfectly settled 

 tracts where no special action is required. Generally 

 throughout those portions of the empire where this 

 planting up is most urgently required, the Government 

 has little or no land in its own exclusive possession. 

 It is a sleeping partner in all the land, but it has 

 made the management over to landholders of one 

 class or another, whom it has taken in as working 

 partners, on condition of receiving certain yearly pay- 

 ments, supposed to be equivalent to half the average 

 profits. Such payments are fixed for longer or 

 shorter periods, and are liable to alteration at the 

 close of these at the pleasure of the Government. 



In almost every village, larger or smaller tracts of 

 land are to be found quite good enough for planting 

 up with hardy trees, but yet too poor to be worth 

 cultivating ; while besides these there are often con- 

 siderable tracts of land, which, though culturable, are 

 never cultivated, and bring in nothing to the land- 

 holder. Legal authority would be required to set 

 apart portions or the whole* of such lands as com- 



* Under any circumstances, as this land serves, after a fashion, 

 as a grazing ground, it could rarely be talcen up at once as a 

 whole. Part would be first planted, and five or six years later, 

 when the trees in that part were sufficiently large to allow of 

 the admission of cattle, another part would be taken up, and 

 so on. 



