68 HAPPY INDIA 



But forests are destroyed not only intentionally, 

 but unintentionally. Fires due to carelessness 

 destroy great numbers of trees. Cattle roaming 

 about the forests will eat up the seedlings and pull 

 up grass by the roots, and so destroy not only the 

 young growth of trees, but the grass which helps 

 to keep the soil together, and then when torrents of 

 rain come the soil, unprotected either by trees or 

 grass, is washed away and the hillside is turned 

 into deep ravines and the plains below are covered 

 with de*bris, and waste and desolation is the conse- 

 quence of the deforestation. 



Mr. Benskin, of the Indian Forest Service, has 

 written very strongly on this question. He says 

 that in former days the greater part of India was 

 covered with forests, and districts which were formerly 

 sheltered are now bare and desert. In the Agricul- 

 tural Journal of India, page 685, Mr. Benskin, writing 

 of the afforestation at Etawah, in the United Provinces 

 of the same districts described in the previous year 

 by Mr. Smythies, says that the bed of the Jumna 

 has been lowered 50 feet in the last five hundred 

 years by the erosion of the river-bed, due to the 

 torrents in the rainy season rushing down from the 

 mountains in a manner which he considers would not 

 have happened if the forests had remained, because 

 in the forests the water is held up and is let out more 

 gradually. When there are no trees and no grass, 

 particularly when the land has been trampled by 

 cattle, the rain rushes quickly off the ground and 

 pours down in a torrent, and countries where five 



