viii INTRODUCTION 



When forestry has made more progress in India, when successful systems 

 of regenerating the oak and coniferous forests of the North- Western, the 

 magnolias, oaks, laurels, and maples of the Eastern Himalaya have been estab- 

 lished, when the effect of fire protection upon Teak and other trees has been 

 determined by series of comparative valuation surveys in different districts, 

 when yield tables, showing the amount of timber production per acre per 

 annum of the principal kinds under different circumstances, have been 

 prepared, and when the chief enemies, insects and fungi, of these species are 

 more fully known, then it will be time to publish complete and practically 

 useful books, dealing with the most important trees in each province. 



One branch of the subject has already been dealt with in a satisfactory 

 manner : I mean the identification of the different timbers of India by their 

 appearance, weight, hardness and other qualities, as well as by their 

 structure, as far as this can be seen with the aid of a good pocket lens. The 

 necessity of readily recognizing the more important Indian timbers had from 

 the commencement of my Indian career in 1856 compelled me to pay attention 

 to this subject. When in 1877 I was ordered by the Government of India to 

 send to the Paris International Exhibition of 1878 a collection of timbers from 

 all provinces of the British Indian Empire, I determined that all specimens 

 should be correctly named, and this could only be accomplished by a method- 

 ical examination of their structure and other qualities. For this purpose I 

 asked for and obtained the assistance of two young Indian foresters, Mr. 

 J. S. Gamble and Mr. A. Smytbies. The work commenced at Simla in 

 August 1877, and early in November it was transferred to Calcutta, where a 

 house with a large compound was hired, and where the logs and specimens 

 sent from all provinces were collected and worked up. There we worked 

 hard until February, the descriptions of the structure of each kind being 

 usually dictated by me to my assistants. The result was the large col- 

 lection of Indian timbers, correctly named, which was sent to Paris by 

 the Government of India and a large number of duplicate collections de- 

 posited at the Dehra Dun Forest School, at the Offices of Conservators in 

 the different provinces, at the Museum, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, at the 

 Nancy Forest School and at other public institutions in Europe, America 

 an d India. 



After despatching these collections I considered how to utilize the result of 

 our labours for the benefit of Indian foresters, and I proposed to the Govern- 

 ment of India, that Mr. Gamble should be entrusted with the publication on 

 Government account of a Manual of Indian Timbers. The result has been 

 the excellent handbook, which appeared in 1881, describing the structure 

 and properties of the timber of 906 species, with notes regarding the distribu- 

 tion of the trees, their rate of growth and other matters. Since then 

 Mr. Gamble has been indefatigable in collecting specimens of timbers not 

 included in his Manual, examining them on the system established in 1877-8 

 and revising the descriptions previously made. The second edition of Indian 

 Timbers, published by him on his own account in 1902, contains descriptions 

 of 1,450 species, illustrated by excellent photographs, which greatly enhance 

 the value of the work. This second edition is an entirely new book : it is 

 based upon the intimate knowledge of the species constituting the Indian 

 forests, which the author had acquired during his long service in the forests of 

 Burma, Bengal, Madras and North-West India. He has greatly enlarged the notes 

 on the geographical distribution and on the economic uses of the different 

 species and has added notes on their mode of growth, their sylvicultural 

 requirements and their treatment in the forest. The suggestion made on 

 p. xix. of his Introduction, that keys of the distinguishing characters of 

 timbers, as far as they can be seen with the aid of a good pocket lens, 

 be prepared for the trees found on limited areas, should be borne in mind by 

 the authors of local Forest Floras. 



It appears to me doubtful whether the local Forest Floras, the preparation of 



