10 PRACTICAL FOREST MANAGEMENT. 



individual officer, a change that removes him is but too likely to 

 be followed by serious deterioration of system. 



" Organisation to be of real and permanent value must not be 

 essentially, or even mainly, dependent on extraordinary personal 

 acquiiTinetits or activity ; the machinery should be such as will 

 work with average men under the direction of the best of their 

 class. And this is peculiarly the case as regards the administra- 

 tion of forests. Results will be so long in coming, and ruin i& 

 so easily and so immediately brought about by the neglect of first 

 principles by a single individual, that as little as possible should 

 be left open to the local executive authorities in this respect. " 



The Secretary of State's reply is as follows : 



' The principles laid down by you, in regard to the treatment 

 of the forests, seem to me to be correct, and I cordially concur in 

 most of the recommendations by which in your letter no. 75, now 

 before me, you propose to apply remedy to the existing evils, and 

 to place this branch of administration on a sound and permanent 

 system. 



' It is very evident, as you state, that the want of system 

 hitherto existing in all parts of India, but more especially in the 

 Bengal, North-Western and Central Provinces, has been one of 1 

 the chief causes of the waste and destruction to which the forests 

 have been subjected. 



' The present state of the forests, however much to be regretted, 

 is not surprising in a country where forests were abundant, though 

 difficult of access, where timber was in no great demand, and 

 where, on the other hand, laud was in great demand for cultivation. 

 Most countries of the world have suffered from similar neglect ; 

 and the results have shown tliemselves, not only in the dearth 

 and consequent high price of timber, but very often in the deteriora- 

 tion of climate, and in the barrenness of laud formerly culturable, 

 situated at the base of hills, when these hills have been stripped 

 of the forests that clothed them, which forests condensed the 

 vapours into rain, and gave protection to the country below them. 



