. ( 10A ) 



unconvinced that these difficulties are insurmountable, or that they 

 should deter the Government from attacking the problem or from 

 making a survey of the possibilities of an advance along the lines 

 of least resistance. There are many areas of waste land in the 

 province where the establishment of forests cannot affect the 

 interests of high farming or cattle-breeding, and where the main 

 result of such establishment would be to transform tracts which 

 are barren and useless into productive and protective ones. 



5. Apart from the direct benefits conferred by wooded areas 

 in the provision of fodder and fuel, their general effects on the 

 countryside cannot be ignored. Although data are not yet available 

 in India whence it can be demonstrated that forests increase the 

 total rainfall, it would appear probable from the investigations 

 undertaken in those countries where trie effects of forests have 

 long been observed that they do so operate. It is beyond question 

 that by the diffusion of cooled air they induce a more evenly- 

 distributed and extended precipitation and mitigate the severity of 

 the climate. Their influence on the water-supply of a tract 

 is equally important. The forests regulate the water in the soil 

 and the moisture in the air by retarding evaporation and by retain- 

 ing rain in the vegetation and subsoil to find its way without 

 erosion into the nearest stream. They accordingly improve the 

 irrigation of a tract by causing an equable flow in rivers and water 

 courses and by preventing floods which may devastate cultivation 

 and which rob the country of valuable soil. 



6. There are undoubtedly considerable expanses of land now 

 yielding a bare sustenance to a few cattle which might be 

 transformed into valuable reserves ; and it would perhaps not stretch 

 the imagination unduly to conceive a future in which enlightened 

 local bodies should undertake the establishment of such plantations 

 and from them derive and diffuse much benefit. There are in 

 Europe towns and villages which not only draw from their commu- 

 nal forests a revenue sufficient to cover all rates and taxes, but 

 obtain a surplus for division among their inhabitants. It is not 

 impossible that afforestation may prove the most practicable method 

 of restoring fertility to an exhausted soil, and that the agricultural 

 future of the plains may lie in their approach to an ultimate ideal of 

 the rotation of forest and cultivation. 



7. The plantations may often have a direct commercial value 

 distinct from the normal income accruing from the sale of wood 

 and fodder. The Fisher forest at Etawah is an instance in point, 

 and forms an excellent example of the successful and profitable 

 conversion of barren ravine land into a plantation, valuable alike 

 to its owners and to the town it adjoins. In 1884 Mr. Fisher, 

 then Collector of Etawah, arranged with nineteen zaurindars for 



