April i8, 1901] 



NA TURE 



599 



which devastated that country in 1867, 1868 and 1869, they 

 furnished an abundance of grass and branches of trees to feed 

 the cattle of the neighbouring towns and villages. Two small 

 British districts, Ajmere and Merwara, are situated in the midst 

 of these native States of Rajputana. Here the whole of the 

 waste and forest lands at the disposal of Government had, at the 

 settlement of 1850, been handed over to the villagers, the State 

 relinquishing its rights in these lands. The results of this 

 "liberal" policy had been disastrous. The hills had become 

 denuded, the timber was sold, the wood was used and these 

 lands had become utterly barren and unproductive. For their 

 crops the people of these districts almost entirely depend upon 

 irrigation. The water is furnished by numerous ponds or tanks, 

 formed by embankments thrown across valleys at convenient 

 points. Many of these tanks are old, others have been built 

 since the country came under British rule. The scanty rainfall 

 in these districts does not come down continuously, but in a 

 small number of heavy showers. The rain rushed down the 

 denuded hillsides in torrents and, instead of filling the tanks 

 slowly but steadily, burst the embankments or filled the tanks 

 with the silt which the floods had brought down. These 

 districts the writer visited in December 1869. The cattle had 

 perished, the people had fled, large villages were entirely deserted, 

 and the country was almost depopulated by these years of drought 

 and famine. Adjoining the district of Merwara on the east side 

 is the territory of the Thakur of Bednor, a feudatory to the 

 Maharajah of Udaipur, and the contrast was extremely sur- 

 prising — in British territory the hills denuded, in Bednor the hills 

 wooded, the forest having been carefully protected. From the 

 top of Bairat Hill, on January 2, 1870, we looked down upon 

 the town, with its large tank and beautiful groves of fruit trees, 

 and here the Thakur's eldest son, who had the management of 

 the forest lands, told the writer how the Nasirabad charcoal 

 contractors had come, offering large sums if he would allow 

 them to cut. He had refused and would always refuse their 

 request, knowing well that the grass in the forest and the 

 branches of the trees had saved the cattle of Bednor in seasons 

 of drought, and that the water supply in the tanks, upon which 

 the fertility of the country depended, was maintained by the 

 forest growth on the hills. 



After several years' hesitation, action was at last taken, in 1874, 

 to remedy the mistakes which, with the best intentions, had 

 been made in 1850. The Ajmere Forest regulation was passed, 

 which gave the Chief Commissioner of those districts power to 

 take up any tract of waste or hilly land as a State forest, grant- 

 ing the people who had formerly had an interest in that land 

 the right of cutting grass and wood in it for their own require- 

 ments and a liberal share in the net proceeds from the manage- 

 ment of these lands. This measure, at first sight, might be 

 termed a confiscation of rights deliberately granted. In reality, 

 however, the proprietary rights had at the settlement not been 

 granted to individuals, but to the village communities. They 

 were communal lands, and as such public, not private, property. 

 Government, therefore, as the guardian of all public interests, 

 had the duty to interfere. This small measure, had it been 

 properly followed up, might have been one of the most beneficial 

 measures passed in the reign of Lord Northbrook. Unfortunately, 

 only 139 square miles, or 5 per cent, of the total area, have 

 been demarcated as State forest in Ajmere-Merwara. And 

 worse than this, grazing was frequently allowed without real 

 necessity, and consequently protection remained incomplete. 

 Nevertheless, with all these drawbacks these reserves are now 

 very fairly stocked with trees and shrubs, and they have proved 

 a great protection to these districts in times of drought during 

 the last twenty years. 



In the famine, which aflfected a large portion of the Bombay 

 Presidency in consequence of the short monsoon of 1896, opera- 

 tions were undertaken on a large scale to provide cattle fodder 

 from the forests to all districts which needed such help. Mr. 

 Allan Shuttleworth, the Conservator of Forests, organised and 

 directed these operations. Presses were set up near the forests, 

 roads were constructed, hay was made and pressed in 80 lb. 

 bales, which were despatched by train, and were sold at cost 

 price at depots all over the affected districts. The same plan 

 was pursued in the late famine, and has also been adopted 

 in other provinces. Grain can easily be sent to districts affected 

 by scarcity, the provision of cattle fodder is more difficult, and 

 in previous famines the loss of cattle has always been the chief 

 calamity. When at last rain falls and no cattle are left to 

 plough, the distress is terrible. Millions of cattle have been 



NO. 1642, VOL. 63] 



saved by these measures, and it is to be hoped that the ruling 

 authorities in India will always bear in mind that if in seasons of 

 drought the forests are to be in a position to furnish cattle fodder 

 on a large scale, they must in ordinary years be efficiently pro- 

 tected against fire and must not be indiscriminately opened to 

 cattle. 



Besides the areas which are classed as forests, there is in each 

 province a large extent of waste, aggregating upwards of 38o,ocx5 

 square miles, or considerably more than one-third of the entire 

 area of the British provinces. At present these waste lands 

 furnish wretched pasture, the scrub and isolated trees upon them 

 yield fuel, and, on a small scale, wood for building and agricul- 

 tural implements. One of the most important, but at the same 

 time most difficult, tasks awaiting Indian foresters in the future 

 is to undertake the management of these lands. On a small 

 scale something in this direction has been done by the forma- 

 tion of canal plantations, and the establishment of fuel and 

 fodder reserves in a few districts. But the work must be taken 

 in hand on a much larger scale and on a methodical system in all 

 provinces. Under good management these lands will produce 

 heavier crops of firewood and cattle-fodder. At present manure 

 is used as fuel- in most districts, and the result is, in spite of the 

 skill and industry with which the Indian peasant cultivates his 

 land, an exceedingly poor yield of crops. In his report on the 

 improvement of Indian agriculture. Dr. Voelcker justly urges 

 the establishment on a large scale of fuel and fodder reserves, in 

 order to supply wood to take the place of cow-dung as fuel. 

 " If wood," he says, " could be made to take the place of dung 

 for fuel, we should soon come to realise that more wood means 

 more manure, that more manure means heavier crops and an 

 increasing fertility of the soil." 



It is not impossible that these measures may eventually lead to 

 the formation of village forests. Experience has shown in Ger- 

 many, in France and in other countries of Europe, that municipal 

 self-government of towns and villages develops in a healthy 

 manner where these municipalities have landed property, pro- 

 vided it is well and efficiently managed. The communal forests 

 in these countries contribute largely to the prosperity of the 

 agricultural population. They furnish all the wood and timber 

 the villages require, and the sale of the surplus yields a steady 

 annual income, in many cases suflScient to cover the charges of 

 the municipality for roads, schools, churches and other purposes. 

 In a number of interesting chapters the author explains the 

 nature and extent of the rights which Government possessed in 

 the waste and forest land of the diff"erent provinces at the time 

 that the State forest reserves commenced to be established. The 

 British Government had legally succeeded to the rights actually 

 exercised by the former rulers of conquered or ceded States at 

 the time of conquest or cession. Consequently, the unoccupied 

 waste, including forests, as a rule, was the property of the State. 

 In these waste and forest lands, however, the people had grazed 

 their cattle, had cut wood and bamboos for their use, and had 

 cleared land for shifting or permanent cultivation. Under the 

 former native Governments the forests had thus been used by 

 the people, not as of right, but subject to the good pleasure of 

 the ruler. When the preparation of proper forest laws for the 

 different provinces was considered, between 1869 and 1878, the 

 most important question was, to what extent this long-continued 

 user of the Government forests should be regarded as consti- 

 tuting a prescriptive right ; and it was deliberately settled that 

 the customary user of the forests under British rule must be held 

 to constitute a prescriptive right. On the other hand, it was 

 acknowledged that Government, as the guardian of all public 

 interests, must insist upon the regulation of these rights, so as 

 to render possible a good management of the reserved forests in 

 the interests of the country. 



It was held that the growth of forest rights in India had been 

 analogous to the growth of similar rights of user in Europe, and 

 consequently that the legal provisions for regulating them or, in 

 case of need, for extinguishing them by means of suitable com- 

 pensation, must be analogous to forest laws made in Europe. 



By the Indian Forest Acts the duty of deciding which claims 

 shall be admitted as a right, as well as the regulation and com- 

 mutation of rights thus admitted, is entrusted to special officers, 

 styled forest settlement officers, and an appeal from their 

 decisions is provided. Under the procedure prescribed by these 

 acts, the 84,148 square miles of reserved forests have been 

 settled. In many cases was it possible to extinguish the rights 

 by suitable compensation ; in others the forest remained bur- 

 dened with rights to pasture or the cutting of wood, but these 



