CH. V J. 1 



MAN AND DOMESTIC ANIMALS 79 



do not only browse, but their owners lop forest trees 

 for them. In the Tropics it is not possible to consider 

 sheep as being entirely dependent on grass for their 

 existence. They live on what they can get, and if grass 

 is absent, as is often the case after fires have swept 

 through the country, they will eat the succulent shoots 

 of shrubs and young trees. 



But it is not only by eating and tearing at shoots 

 that damage is done to the forest. Perhaps even more 

 considerable harm is done by the stamping of innumer- 

 able hoofs on the soil. On slopes, the surface soil is 

 first loosened and then either blown away by the wind 

 or washed away by the next tropical downpour. The 

 debris which are thus carried off may be deposited over 

 fertile fields in the plains, and thus damage is not only 

 done to the forest itself but to cultivation. One of the 

 first measures adopted in the re-afforestation schemes 

 of the Alps is to exclude grazing from the catchment 

 basins of streams. In the hills of Hushiarpur in the 

 Panjab, loose sandstone hills have been denuded, and 

 thousands of acres of fertile land have been covered by 

 sterile sand, owing to an unchecked grazing of goats 

 and other animals. 1 



In the plains the soil gets beaten down and hardened. 

 There is no mistaking a forest in which heavy grazino- 

 is permitted. Many of the trees are stag-headed and 

 they look hide-bound. Undergrowth is scanty and 

 consists largely of thorny shrubs, under the protection 

 of which perhaps some saplings of forest trees may 

 struggle for existence. What seedlings of trees there 

 are elsewhere, either come up under the shelter of large 

 trees where, herbage being scanty, the soil has not been 

 trampled down so much, or, if found elsewhere, they 

 are stunted and ill -shaped from being constantly 

 trampled down. 



The problem of dealing satisfactorily with claims to 

 pasture cattle is one of the most difficult for the 

 administrator to solve. On the one hand there is the 



1 B. Ribbentrop, Forestry in British India. 



