( 41 ) 



Coupe 1 will be worked in 1900-1901, 1902-3, 1904-5, ; Coupe 2 in 1901-2, 1903-4, 



1905-6 . . . . ; and so on. 



118. The grand rule to observe, if the clumps are to be brought up to, and kept up at, 

 their full production is to maintain in each clump .at least twice as many shoots of market- 

 able size as are produced in one season. A simple way to apply this rule will be to direct 

 that in no case shall shoots of the current year be cut ; the balance required to make up the 

 minimum number of shoots to be preserved will then consist of shoots that are too crooked 

 to be saleable or are situated too far inside the clump to be accessible to the cutter. High 

 stumps left in a clump always render its exploitation difficult ; hence the necessity of insist- 

 ing on cutting within one foot of the ground. See also concluding sentence of paragraph 

 120 below. 



119. Owing to the extreme paucity of bamboo clumps in them, many blocks and parts 

 of blocks have been left out of the scheme of coupes given in paragraph 117 above. In such 

 areas the bamboos will not of course remain unutilised, but will be exploited, on the principles 

 enunciated in the immediately preceding paragraph, for the benefit of adjoining villagers, who 

 wHl absorb the entire annual production. 



ARTICLE 2. Manufacture of Charcoal. 



120. Thanks to the Brewery at Jubbulpore and the presence of a large European popula- 

 tion there, the demand for charcoal at that town certainly exceeds 4,000 maunds a year. This 

 will render feasible the immediate utilisation, within a radius of 20 miles of it, of more than 

 20,000 maunds of wood that would otherwise have no value whatsoever and would either be 

 left uncut to the detriment of the forest, or if cut, cumber the ground in the coupes, offering 

 a serious obstacle to the coppice reproduction or increasing the destructiveness of possible 

 conflagrations. 



For iron-smelting the furnace owners make their own arrangements for the manufacture 

 of their charcoal. In this connection it must not be forgotten that for refining the loc.vll}' 

 made pig, bamboo charcoal is used, thus enabling us to clean out without expense congested 

 clumps and to utilise the refuse left behind by bamboo cutters. 



ARTICLE 3. Utilization of Minor Produce. 



121. Every endeavour should be made to dispose of as much grass as possible with the 

 double object of making revenue and diminishing the frequency and destructiveness of forest 

 fires. The rates of royalty must therefore be pitched low and in inverse proportion to the 

 distance of the forests from the place of demand. It is in the coupes that will be closed to 

 grazing immediately after exploitation that the grass will be most abundant and most 

 dangerous; its removal should hence be encouraged, even if it is necessary to give it away 

 free. A useful measure with reference to prosperous villages possessing an insufficiency 

 of grass lands will be to levy a small annual fee from those inhabitants who are willing to 

 commute by means of a single trifling payment for the right to take out as much grass 

 as they want and whenever they care to take it out. 



In connection with the utilisation of grass it must not be forgotten that the best crop 

 comes up where a forest fire has passed through or where the previous year's crop has been 

 cut or grazed over or where recent felling and export operations have broken up and crushed 

 down into the soil the old crop. Accordingly where there is a steady demand for grass, care 

 should be taken to entirely remove the crop every year, and if there is no other way of getting 

 rid of it, it should be carefully considered whether the suggestions contained in the conclud- 

 ing portion of paragraph 113 above cannot be safely carried out. 



122. The utilisation of the harra fruit requires much more attention than has hitherto 

 been given to it. The tree is abundant in the Dhanwahi Range and in the blocks bordering 

 on the Mandla district and the Rewah State, but the outturn, as shown by our books, is 

 entirely incommensurate with this abundance. As soon as practicable an enumeration survey 

 of the harra trees will be made in each block under the following classes (see Appendix VI) : 



Class A. Trees up to 6" in diameter 

 B. from 6" to 12" in diameter 

 ,, C. 12",, 18",, 



,i D. above 18" in diameter 



and by actual continued experiment with a sufficient number of selected trees an estimate 

 will be made of the average yield of a tree of each class in (ij a good year, (ii) an average year, 

 and (iii) a bad year. Hitherto most of the harra of Government forests gets stolen, often 

 with the connivance of, and even directly by, the dishonest members of the out-door staff. It 

 is to provide against such theft that the above enumeration of the trees has been prescribed ; 

 every subordinate will each year know how much harra is expected from the various blocks in 

 his charge, and any marked divergence between the expected and actual outturn of a block 

 will be immediately enquired into and the facts ascertained with certainty. Each year the 

 abundance of the flowering, the progress of fructification and ripening and the character of 

 the season will be closely watched and recorded and also noted in the Forest Journal. 



