48 Government Forestry Abroad. ['232 



as a type of Indian forestry, it may not be without 

 interest to sketch briefly its chief points. Each of 

 the six ranges which the forest contains is divided 

 into twenty compartments, or, in the Indian termi- 

 nology, coupes, among which the fellings follow a 

 regular sequence, so that each coupe is cut over once 

 in twenty years. The period of work in each coupe 

 really embraces three years, so that different stages 

 of the operations are going on in three of them 

 at the same time. During the first year the tropi- 

 cal creepers which interfere with the lumbering are 

 cut through, and the trees which are to be taken out 

 are selected, marked with the government hammer 

 and girdled. The trees selected are sal (sJwrea 

 robusta) which are unsound, or which would not im- 

 prove during the next twenty years, trees of inferior 

 species which will still furnish timber, and trees of 

 other inferior kinds which are injuring by their shade 

 the young sal seedlings. The timber trees which 

 have been marked are sold by auction to a contractor, 

 the unit of sale being the square- mile, and are re- 

 moved during the second year. In the third year 

 the less valuable and the injured trees are cut out, 

 hauled to the roads and sold as firewood. This 

 method of lumbering has rightly been called "im- 

 provement felling/' since their object is to raise the 

 general condition of the forest rather than to draw 

 from it a large annual revenue at present. For 

 minor forest produce a system of sale by tickets is 

 in force, it is said, with admirable result. 



The difficulty of coping with forest fires in India 

 would be notably greater than in the United States 

 were it not for the greater density of the Indian pop- 

 ulation. The method consists in cutting fire paths 



