198 "TTransactions.—Müiscellaneous. 
including purchase and lease of some 19,000 acres of land from a native 
Radj,has been £30,000, and the receipts from thinnings, etc., £10,000. 
These plantations were valued last year at minimum rates at £150,000, and 
Colonel Pearson lately officiating as Inspector-General of Forests in India, 
estimated their value when mature at no less than two millions sterling. 
The plantations of Australian Eucalypti (chiefly the blue gum), and acacias 
in the Nilgiri Hills, Madras, extend to nearly 1000 acres, have eost £4,000, 
and yielded £2,000 since 1860, when they were commenced. I cannot give 
an estimate of their value; but in the ease of one small plantation (60 
acres) of E. globulus and marginata, planted in 1870, we made a very light 
preliminary thinning last year, and recouped a quarter of our total expendi- 
ture on it. The trees in this plantation, planted at six feet apart, average 
thirty-five feet in height, and nine inches in circumference, and the whole 
plantation is even and well grown. The thinnings yield excellent poles 
and firewood, and the timber of the Eucalypti and Acacia melanoxylon is 
found to be excellent. 
From one to two hundred acres are to be planted annually to replace 
the indigenous forest which is of no value as timber, but is cleared for the 
firewood supply of the settlement, and extension of tea and coffee cultivation. 
The seed, which we obtain from Victoria, is sown in January, the seedlings 
transplanted in March or April, and ‘put out" during the first rains in 
June, in small pits six feet apart. No further care is required. The plan- 
tations of Casuarina equisetifolia, the she-oak of Australia, on the sandy sea- 
board, and river banks in the Madras Presidency, promise to be exceptionally 
successful, and the results merit the attention of foresters in all parts of 
the globe, the estimated yield per acre, which has been carefully calculated 
and checked, being unusually high—four times that of the best forests in 
France—and the plantations being situated on tracts of pure sand, hitherto 
quite valueless and unproductive. The wood is chiefly used for firing, and 
the Government plantations were mainly intended to secure an adequate 
supply for the railway locomotives in the absence of coal. The cost per 
acre varies from £4 to £10 in different districts, including all charges up to 
the time of clearing for the first time, which will be done after the short term 
of eight years on an average, so rapid is the growth. The yield varies from 
twenty-two tons of engine fuel, valued at £13, to fifty-four tons valued at 
£32, according to the method pursued, which has varied in several districts 
as regards the number of trees to the acre, age when felled, ete. So much 
for the financial results of well considered and carefully carried out 
planting operations in other countries. Their advantages in affording an 
adequate supply of timber and firewood and improving the climate should 
also not be lost sight of. If, for instance, we can succeed in creating blocks 
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