existing staff, an increase in which had to be justified by pointing to 

 an increase in revenue, and owing to their necessary concentration on 

 the settling and management of the extensive reserved forests of the 

 province. Sir John Hewett is, however, convinced that a stage 

 has now been reached in the economic development of the province 

 when systematic examination of the possibilities of afforestation 

 is imperative. The fuel and fodder reserves at present in existence 

 constitute an insignificant proportion of the provincial area. The 

 whole area of reserved forest is at present about 4 per cent, of the 

 total area ; the addition of the Kumaun " protected " forests will 

 raise the proportion to 6 or 7 per cent. Of this reserve much 

 is necessarily not available for fodder or fuel. It is, moreover, 

 largely concentrated in certain areas, and extensive tracts are 

 situated at such a distance from the forests that the latter cannot 

 serve as fuel or fodder reserves of them. With the agricultural 

 and industrial development of the province a rapidly expanding 

 demand for forest produce, and in particular for fuel , small timber 

 and grass, must be anticipated. For the future economic progress 

 of the people the Lieutenant-Governor believes it essential that 

 action should be undertaken to provide well-distributed areas for 

 the production of these commodities. Such action will prove 

 increasingly difficult to initiate as agriculture and industries 

 expand. Systematic action is at the present juncture even 

 more urgently, demanded to prevent the progressive reduction of 

 the restricted area remaining under forest a process which with- 

 out State interference must operate with increasing rapidity. The 

 disappearance even of private forests threatens to jeopardize the 

 existence of the reserved forests since it tends to throw upon the 

 latter a burden in providing grazing which they cannot hope to 

 support. Moreover, the increasing pressure of population and 

 cultivation upon existing reserves bids fair at no distant date to 

 react with destructive effect on the cattle-supply of the province 

 and, through the cattle, directly on its general agricultural pros- 

 perity. It involves, moreover, a disastrous rise in the price of 

 timber such as is at 'the present moment apprehended in Europe, 

 an apprehension which has in England lent stimulus to a national 

 afforestation movement. In view of the demonstrable contraction 

 of fuel supplies in the plains of the province and with the expe- 

 rience of the Punjab before him, Sir John Hewett regards the 

 need for definite action as imperative. 



13. Afforestation is, however, a branch of forestry which differs 

 widely from the management of existing forests, and it is a branch 

 in which the officers of the Forest department have as yet had 

 little experience. The Lieutenant-Governor therefore considers 



