FOREST CLEARINGS. 75 



twig, the clearing will need a little hand burning 

 i.e., parties of men go and lop up with axes and 

 billhook all the small wood that remain, destroying 

 it piecemeal on bonfires, though this is sometimes 

 included in the felling contract. When this has 

 been done the land is practically ready for planting, 

 a few heavy showers washing the ground into a 

 more natural tint and condition. 



No one can witness this reckless stripping of 

 mountain regions without regret and some fears 

 for the ultimate consequences. Lieut. Colonel 

 Beddowe, in an admirable Report of the Famine 

 Commissioners, published in their Blue-book (1884), 

 says : 



" The denudation of forests for actual cultivation paying 

 .assessment has been very great during the last twenty years. 

 In Wynad it is said to be 22,526 acres, and it has been 

 very extensive on the Nilgiri. In the face of railways and 

 an ever-increasing population, it must of course go on ex- 

 tending, and there is still ample room for much extension, 

 though of course there must be a limit. Revenue officers 

 will be too anxious to open out the hill tracts of their 

 district and realize a revenue from the land, and can scarcely 

 be trusted as to what tracts are to be reserved. These 

 should in future be under the Forest Department, who 

 should be responsible to Government that the water supply 

 of the country is not affected. Coffee and Tea bushes will 

 never protect the soil and water supply in the way that forest 

 does ; the soil being constantly broken up is washed away, 

 and there is no accumulation of humus. Mr. Ferguson, the 

 forest officer of Nilambur, explains the process of forest 

 .gradually turning into the poorest, most worthless scrub. He 

 states that 4,000 to 5,000 acres are thus destroyed annually in 

 Malabar." 



