612 Coco-nuts The Consols of the East 



lands they can sell for planting and which 

 should be reserved as shelters and rain centres 

 for the benefit of the people under their charge. 

 It is an international as well as an inter-depart- 

 mental matter, as we pointed out at the Brussels 

 Congress in 1910, and afterwards in book form, 

 when we claimed that " when opening up fresh 

 tropical forest lands, or laying down new estates, 

 the authorities should take quite as stringent 

 precautions to safeguard the health of the trees, 

 plants, &c., as they are expected to do when 

 building a new city." l Forest belts not only 

 assure water supplies, but reserve them as they 

 come and so equalize them for future use, as 

 Paris has learnt to her cost since the woody 

 uplands that feed the Seine have been 

 denuded and caused that river to flood the 

 gay city to a ruinous extent at one time, 

 and then to run so dry at another that it 

 was easier (if not cheaper) to wash in soda 

 water than go to the standpipes for their 

 supplies. 2 



We conclude, therefore, with this warning, 

 as we believe the economic resources of both 

 India and Equatorial Africa will be greatly- 

 developed during the coming century, and (this 



1 "See Notes on Soil and Plant Sanitation," Preface, 

 p. xviii, and especially the section devoted to Protective 

 Belts, pp. 49-67, in which the causes of the treeless veldts 

 in South Africa and of the Sahara up north, as well as 

 soil deterioration in Carolina, U.S.A., are fully discussed. 



8 See Tropical Life, August, 1911, p. 153. 



