CHAPTER I. 



FIRE-CONSERVANCY. 



The term which heads this Chapter is an unhappy one, for it 

 means, not what it implies, but the very opposite, viz,, the pre- 

 servation of forests from fire. But long use in official reports 

 and professional parlance has given it the stamp of currency, and 

 no shorter and more appropriate equivalent expression, unless 

 indeed it be fire prevention, has yet been devised.. 



To Sir Dietrich Brandis is due the honour of having first urged, 

 with his characteristic energy and indomitable perseverance, the 

 necessity of taking special measures for the prevention of forest 

 fires, and to the Central Provinces Administration is due the honour 

 of having first adopted them and practically demonstrated the 

 possibility of success. An historical interest will for ever attach 

 to the name of the Bori forest, at the foot of the Pachmarhi block 

 of the Sathpuras, where in the cold weather of 1865 the first at- 

 tempt at fire conservancy was made by Lieutenant, now Lieutenant 

 Colonel J. C. Doveton, acting under the orders of Major Pearson 

 the first Conservator of Forsts in those Provinces. For various 

 reasons little general interest was taken in the subject for several 

 years, so little indeed that two successive and completely success- 

 ful attempts made in Garhwal, N.W.P. by that talented officer, Mr. 

 Richard Thompson, in 1866 and 1867, were passed over without 

 the slightest official notice having been taken of them. It was 

 only in 1871 that measures for protecting forests against fires be- 

 gan to be generalised, and it was not until 1872 that they were 

 extended to the majority of the several provinces of India, 



SECTION I, 

 Necessity for keeping out fire. 



Fires injure forests in various ways. Firstly, they destroy fallen- 

 seeds and, if they rise high enough, also fruit still hanging on tho 

 trees.. Secondly, they kill all yearlings not possessing any collum 

 buds and most of those possessing such buds ; also a larger or 

 smaller proportion of older plants, according to the amount of 

 combustible matter on the ground, the number of casualties being 

 greatest if the species are coniferous. Thirdly, the plants, that are 

 not killed, are thrown back ia their growth, are rendered unheal- 



