WOODLANDS IN WARM CLIMATES: FORESTS IN INDIA. 307 



ing the raiu-fall, and yielding up gradually to tho streams a continuous supply of water 

 a thiug, I need hardly say, in a hot country, of primary importance. Moreover, the 

 rain is retained by forests on the surface of the ground; it gradually permeates to the 

 subsoil, and so feeds the underground water-bearing strata upon which springs and 

 wells must eventually depend. If the forest is indiscriminately removed, the rain runs 

 off" as fast as it falls, and washes away the superficial and fertile soil with it. 



The mischief already done in Mauritius and various West India Islands is so widely 

 spread (being in some, indeed, irreparable), and the feeling of the colonists against 

 any interference on the part of the government is apt to be so determined, that I ven- 

 ture to press upon your lordship my own opinion as to the urgency of active steps 

 being taken in the case of an island so beautiful and, at iiresent, so fertile as Ceylop. 

 I have lately received an account of the deterioration of the climate of some of the Lee- 

 ward Islands, which aflfords a melancholy confirmation of what I have urged above : 



" The contrast between neighboring islands similarly situated is most striking. The 

 Bad change which has befallen the smaller ones is, without any doubt, to be ascribed 

 to human agency alone. It is recorded of these that in former times they were clothed 

 with dense forests, and their older inhabitants remembered when the rains were abun- 

 dant and the hills and all uncultivated i:)laces were shaded by extensive groves. 

 The removal of the trees was certainly the cause of the present evil. The opening of 

 the soil to the vertical sun rapidly dries up the moisture, and prevents the rain from 

 sinking to the roots of the plants. The rainy seasons in these climates are not contin- 

 uous, cloudy days, but successions of sudden showers, with the sun shining hot in the 

 intervals. Without shade upon the surface, the water is rapidly exhaled, and springs 

 and streams diminish." 



It is not, however, simply to the restriction of the removal of existing forests that I 

 would venture to direct your lordship's attention, but also to the object, no less im- 

 portant, of making new plantations of forest trees useful for timber and in the arts. 

 Such plantations would serve the double object of retaining the desired humidity and 

 of yielding a revenue to the island.' 



His Excellency W. H. Gregory, governor of Ceylon, in reporting the 

 forest regulations adopted in that colony (July 31, 1873), mentions that 

 Sir Hndson Lowe, when in Geylon, imported from Brazil the Lantana 

 as an ornamental plant. It is now overspreading the island below a 

 certain elevation, between 2,000 and 3,000 feet. It is stated that the 

 moisture retained in the soil by the dense vegetation of this plant, com- 

 bined with the humus formed by the decay of its leaves, is already 

 renovating land abandoned and worn out. It was thought by Mr. 

 Thwaites, director of the royal botanical garden at Pr6riideniya, Ceylon, 

 that this might be introduced with advantage into the West India 

 Islands, now suffering from the destruction of forests, and thus pre- 

 pare the soil for a new forest growth. If useful there, why not in 

 Southern California and other warm arid regions of our own country ? 



WOODLANDS IN WARM CLIMATES — FORESTS IN INDIA.* 



The question as between the maintenance and removal of forests appears to us ta be 

 a question of compensations. Wherever the progress of j)opulation requires that every 

 portion of the soil must be made to yield its quota of human food, there the destruction 

 of forests is to be desired, and the disadvantages to which want of wood for social and 

 general purposes may lead must be compensated for, as they doubtless will be, by the 

 ingenuity which is born of necessity. But there are localities in nearly all countri(8 

 to which the tide of population can never flow, but where the forest can flourish, and 

 where it ought to be maintained. To tropical countries, the preservation of the 

 springs which feed the rivers, on which the fertility of the land and the prosperity of 

 the people are so essentially dependent, is of the greatest importance. These springs 

 rise in the mountain regions, where forests prevail, and it is to such regions that a 

 protective agency should be extended, for there can be but little doubt that the entire 



' It appears from subsequent correspondence that a pernicious system of cultivation, 

 which consists in clearing ofi", burning, and cultivating a couple of years, and then leav- 

 ing for fifteen years until some fertility was restored, has been an important cause of 

 this change of climate. 



* Extract from a report of a committee of the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science. Ipswich meeting, 1S51, p. 78. This committee consiated of Dr. Hugh 

 CUghorn, Madras Med. Estab. ; Forhea Eoyle, King's Coll., Lond.j R. Baird Smith, Ben- 

 gal Engineers, and Capt. B. Strachey, Bengal Engineers. 



