46 Government Forestry Abroad. [230 



It is also instructive to recall that a large share of 

 the prosperity of Rangoon, whose merchants pro- 

 tested in 1856 that to restrict the teak lumbering 

 was to destroy the growth of their city, is due to-day 

 to the steady business in this very timber which a 

 conservative forest policy has secured. 



" History has proved," says Dr. Schlich, 1 "that the preservation 

 of an appropriate percentage of the area as forests cannot be left to 

 private enterprise in India, so that forest conservancy in that 

 country has for some time past been regarded as a duty of the State. 



"Of the total area of government forests, which may perhaps 

 amount to some 70,000,000 of acres, 55,000,000 have been brought 

 under the control of the Forest Department. Of this area 33,000,000 

 are so-called reserved State forests, that is to say, areas which, under 

 the existing forest law, have been set aside as permanent forest 

 estates, while the remaining 23,000,000 are either protected or 

 so-called unclassed State forests. These areas together comprise 

 about 11 per cent, of the total area of the provinces in which they 

 are situated. Eather more than half the area, or about 6 per cent., 

 are strictly preserved and systematically managed forests." 



The formation of these reserved State forests was 

 the first step in systematic forest management, and 

 it was carried out along lines which are typical. The 

 forest areas were first selected, following standards 

 which cannot be enumerated here, then surveyed and 

 demarcated on the ground, and finally established as 

 reserved State forests by an act which provided, 

 first, for the presentation within a certain time of all 

 claims against the State forests as demarcated; sec- 

 ondly, for their hearing and definite settlement; 

 thirdly, that no prescriptive rights could accrue in 

 reserved State forests after their declaration as such 

 under the act; and fourthly, for the special treatment 

 of forest offences. 



These forests have been gradually brought under 

 simple but systematic methods of management, which 



1 Manual of Forestry, Vol. J, London, 1889. 



