THE FIRST WORKING PLANS. 17 



regeneration is not already established, and with clear felling 

 where the above conditions are favourable, and where there is 

 an intensive demand for fuel as well as timber. 



This brief review of the gradual evolution of forest management 

 and working plans in the United Provinces would be incomplete 

 without a reference to the evolution of research work. For the 

 first 40 years of the existence of the Forest department in India 

 no attempt was made to organise the conduct of forest research, 

 and thus to co-ordinate and elaborate the scientific knowledge so 

 necessary to successful economic working. Valuable scientific 

 work has, it is true, been carried out from time to time, as the 

 result of individual efforts on the part of enthusiasts in special 

 branches ; but, while the results of these efforts have in many 

 cases been published, much useful work has been lost for want of 

 systematized methods. This state of affairs may perhaps be 

 considered to some extent as a reproach to those concerned, but it 

 must be remembered that the existence of the Forest department 

 in its earlier years depended on its justifying itself by immediate 

 financial results, so that the very inadequate staff employed was 

 compelled to devote the whole of its time to the preliminary work 

 of organisation, often in the face of powerful opposition. However, 

 a commencement in organised forest research was made in 1906 

 by the establishment of the Forest Kesearch Institute at Dehra 

 Dun, and from that time onwards research work has been 

 prosecuted energetically. Troup was the pioneer of systematic 

 statistical research in sal, chir and deodar, the three principal 

 United Provinces species ; and it is largely due to him that it has 

 been possible to prepare a reliable yield table for sal, which has 

 had a profound effect on such important matters as the determi- 

 nation of the rotation, on thinnings, and the calculation of the 

 yield, etc., in recent working plans. Hole's work on the oecology 

 of the sal seedling has had important results and greatly affected 

 the technique of sal regeneration operations. 



By 1918 it was realised that research work, especially 

 silviculture, must be decentralised, and a special research post of 



2 



