320 



THE FORESTS OF UPPER INDIA 



Rule of thin- 

 ning. 



Protection 

 from wind. 



Rule for pro- 

 duction of 

 timber. 



are cut down and lo acres replanted each year. Thus, at the 

 end of the century every square has had a full crop of mature 

 timber taken off it and been replanted with a new crop. The 

 rule for thinning, which is also carried out at stated periods, is to 

 cut out the overshadowed stems. Thus, the surviving trees are 

 chosen by natural selection, and the master trees only remain. 

 The heads of the trees are always seeking the daylight, and thus 

 the most rapid lengthening out is attained, and the side branches 

 are crushed and drop off as they decay, leaving a straight-grained 

 tree, free from knots. Thinning out is then performed, to let in 

 air and light and promote the thickening process. The sale of 

 thinnings pays all the expenses, and at the end of the loo years 

 the ground carries from loo to 150 mature trees to each acre, of 

 a value of, say, j[^\ per tree.* 



The rent of this land for grazing might be about 5s. yearly per 

 acre, so that from one acre of forest there is a revenue of over ;!^ioo 

 in 100 years, or j[,\ per acre yearly instead of 5s. There is an 

 important consideration always to be acted on — that of the effect 

 of the prevailing wind. The tallest trees must always have the 

 next tallest plot to windward of them, to protect them from the 

 storm ; and so the plots are arranged in steps like stairs, each older 

 lot being guarded by a younger lot, while the youngest lot is 

 sheltered by the oldest of the next series of steps. 



There is another important consideration in a ' working plan ' 

 recorded in the books, with dates and areas of cutting and 

 planting prescribed for all time to come : that, at the end of any 

 rotation period, the capital value of the stock-in-trade — i.e.^ the 

 growing timber — must be fully maintained, or even improved, so 

 that the annual yield, representing the interest of that capital, is a 

 source of revenue as regular as clockwork to the State which owns 

 the forest. The rule is that the zuwachs, or growth of timber of 

 the district, must never be outstepped by the bentitzung, or yield 

 of timber. 



In private forests, and those worked under the system adopted 

 in Great Britain and her colonies, the end of a working period is 

 often the end of the forest. Interest and principal are generally 

 gone, or in the more favourable cases the stock is deteriorated by 



* It has been found that land that is not worth more than 8s. per acre for 

 grazing will pay far better to plant. 



