xliv Appendia. 
be respected, But I would rather advocate the withdrawal of the special 
tax upon him and let him pay for his wood like anyone else, as I cannot see 
that it is right or fair that the Westland or Nelson miner should get timber 
free for his £1, whilst the Otago miner gets none, and the Thames miner 
has to pay 25s. for each kauri tree, which I believe goes to the Natives. I 
have found that, if all have to pay, none complain or have a grievance, and 
there is nothing we should more carefully avoid or guard against than the 
creation of special rights or privileges—our special bugbear in India. 
Before concluding, I should like to place before you very briefly some of 
the financial results of State Forestry in India and elsewhere. 
Forest Conservancy in India by a State or Government department dates 
from about 20 years ago. The department, from very small beginnings, 
originating in many Provinces in the mere appointment of a few forest 
guards to protect certain trees, and the establishment of a few small nurseries 
and plantations, has gradually taken charge of a very large public estate, 
consisting of forests all more or less deteriorated to an extent of which you 
in New Zealand can have no idea, devastated yearly by fire, overrun by 
countless numbers of cattle and sheep, whose herds considered they had a 
right to cut down any tree from mere wantonness, or to allow their beasts 
to feed on the leaves, and-encumbered with the rights and privileges of a 
Native population of over 200,000,000. Nota promising property to tackle 
and improve, still less to exact an annual surplus from. Still it has been 
done, and by the last returns for the whole of India, which I have with me, 
viz., those for 1878—74, the forest revenue was £700,000, and expenditure 
£414,000 odd, leaving a surplus of upwards of £285,000, or 41 per cent. 
on the total revenue. Both revenue and expenditure are about double what 
they were ten years previously, in 1864-65. 
I do not say that there have not been faults in our Indian forest ad- 
ministration, that we may not have looked too much to revenue and too 
little to real conservancy and improvements ; that some of the royalties— 
that on firewood for instance—may not have pressed hardly on the class of 
poor cultivators, who pay it when they have no village forest from which 
to obtain it free. But I do say, that whilst there is no doubt that the state 
of the forests has been and is being improved every day, reserves selected, 
demareated, and surveyed, occupying a special branch of the department ; 
plantations on a large scale established ; the real rights and even privileges 
of the people, in the shape of timber for agricultural purposes, grazing, etc., 
have been scrupulously and liberally conceded to them; and that the 
manner in which revenue has always balanced and is now steadily yielding 
an increased surplus on expenditure, is most gratifying and encouraging to 
the forester in all parts of the world. I may add that in the Madras Presi- 
