44 



The sections of the Gape Forest Act of 1888, which regulate the procedure are the 

 following : 



" 4. Prior to the publication hereafter in the Gazette of any notice declaring an 

 area to be a demarcated forest, copies of a plan of such forest and of the 

 report of the person employed to carry out the demarcation, shall be 

 deposited for public inspection in the office of the Civil Commissioner of 

 the Division in which the forest is situated, and the Commissioner shall 

 cause notice to be given once a month for a period of three months in 

 the Gazette, and in some newspaper circulating in the Division of the 

 intention to publish the said notice of declaration of demarcation. 



"5. In case no court of competent jurisdiction shall during a period of three 

 months in the last Section mentioned, make on the application of any per- 

 son interested any order restraining such declaration, or in case of such 

 restraint, if such court shall within a period to be fixed by such order of 

 restraint, decide against the objector or alter the limits of demarcation, the 

 said notice of declaration fixing the limits of demarcation as originally 

 fixed or as altered, as the case may be, shall be published, and thereupon 

 the area to be so limited shall become a demarcated forest." 



Sections 3 to 17 of the Madras Forest Act, of 1882, deal at greater length with the 

 reservation of forests, but the provisions in this respect are essentially similar to the 

 preceding. 



Where they exist, prescriptive rights or servitudes should be bought up, or com- 

 muted by a division of the land ; for otherwise, as it has been found in India and at the 

 Cape, as well as in European countries, they would interfere seriously with the manage- 

 ment, and especially the protection of the forests. This happens chiefly when the rights 

 are exercised in respect to grazing or to the cutting of small timber and firewood. The 

 working of mature timber can be regulated so as to save the forest from deterioration, 

 but the destruction of the re-growth, which cannot be checked so easily, speedily con- 

 signs it to ruin. The demarkating officer should be empowered to effect any convenient 

 settlement of such rights as may exist, subject to executive sanction. In some cases an 

 amicable arrangement may not be arrived at, and to meet this contingency the Forest 

 Law should provide for the redemption of servitudes, by making it lawful for the Crown 

 to demand the division by arbitration of any Crown forest subject to servitudes or joint 

 ownership. 



I should recommend the closure of the timber forests pending the establishment of 

 reserves. The work of demarkation would claim the undivided attention of a forest 

 department during the first year of its existence, and besides it is best not to decide upon 

 the treatment to be adopted in each forest before it is surveyed . Some of the forests 



