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important advance in the forestry of South Africa. Forest laws may be thought irksome 

 at first, but they are none the less necessary if forests are to be preserved. The following 

 are the chief points that would have to be dealt with in a Forest Law for Natal. 



FOREST TENURE AND DEMARKATTON. A distinction requires to be drawn between 

 deraarkated and undemarkated forest ; the first includes areas that have been surveyed 

 or beaconed off and proclaimed in the Gazette ; the second includes Commonages 

 or Native Locations, or any vacant Crown land on which trees are growing, or land 

 on which the Crown retains a right to the timber. Demarkated forests are intended 

 to be strictly conserved ; undemarkated forests to be protected as circumstances may 

 dictate. The course to be followed in establishing forest reserves should be indicated in 

 the Law. It may be similar to that adopted at the Cape, of which I have already given 

 details. 



Demarkated forest should be declared inalienable. This is a provision, adopted in 

 most countries, which would effectually prevent encroachments and render invalid any of 

 the slicing which surveyors affect. The State, being the best forest proprietor, would 

 assure by this means the future of the forests, and serve the best interests of the country. 

 There should be clauses to free both demarkated and undemarkated forest from the accru- 

 ing of any future rights or servitudes, and to bar prescription. The want of such pro- 

 visions makes it possible for people to systematically plunder the forest during thirty 

 years, and then set up prescription or claims which it is not possible to disprove. At the 

 Knysna, a large tract of country containing over 5,000 acres of forest was lost in 1886 

 through prescription. It is manifestly unfair to apply to Crown lands -which cannot be 

 looked after closely, the principle of prescription, however judicious it may be for private 

 property, and in the same way servitudes and rights should not apply. 



Servitudes and rights being incompati ble with the proper management of a forest, 

 there should also be a clause to provide for the extinction of such rights or servitudes by 

 arbitration, and to empower the Government, in other cases, to make rules to provide for 

 the manner in which such rights shall be exercised. 



The operation of the laws that relate to Crown land should be confirmed, extended, 

 modified, or excluded, as the case may be, in their application to forest land. Both 

 demarkated and undemarkated forest should be declared " j.ublic lands " within the mean- 

 ing of the " Grass Burning Law," No. 21, 18fi5 ; and the provisions of Ordinance No. 

 2, 1855, " to prevent unlicensed squatting and to regulate the occupation of land by 

 Natives," should apply ; also those of the Squatter's Bent Law, 1884. The exclusion of 

 cattle being essential, demarkated forest should be exempted from the servitude of outspan 

 under the Outspan Law, 1870, and excluded from the operation of Sec. 8 of the Pound 

 Law No. 25, 1874, according to which cattle cannot be impounded off Crown land. The 

 provisions of the Main Roads Construction Eaw, 1870, should be declared not to apply to 



