2 NO TES ON FORES TR Y. 



enough throughout the year ; little need for tim- 

 ber where the rudest huts supplied the necessary 

 shelter. The habits of the people were simple, 

 their wants few ; and such forests as escaped the 

 clearing axe of the Hindu appear to have owed 

 their preservation rather to their non-suitability to 

 agricultural purposes, or to the fact that there 

 was an ample area of already cleared land, than 

 to any purposed check based on the recognition of 

 the fact that a greater or less proportion of forest 

 area was necessary to the general well-being of 

 the people. It is probable that, for long periods 

 in the history of India, the increase of population 

 was scarcely appreciable : areas redeemed from 

 the forest in times of peace had been allowed 

 to run waste in time of war, and the alternate 

 resumption and abandonment of such tracts so 

 far occupied the energies of the people as to re- 

 move all temptation to trench further on forest 

 area. The Hindu appears never to have reached 

 that stage in which the threatened extinction of 

 the forests is recognised as an impending cala- 

 mity. 



The invasion of Mohammedan conquerors appears 

 to have been followed by the purposed conservation 

 of such remaining forest tracts as were readily 

 accessible. Uninfluenced by the tenderness for 

 animal life which characterised the Hindu rulers, 



