VI PREFACE. 



gradually became apparent, and rendered it imperative 

 that measures should be taken to organise a system of 

 forest administration, which would enable the authorities 

 to economise public property for the public good. 



The subject was brought before the attention of the 

 British Association for the Advancement of Science, which 

 met at Edinburgh in 1850 ; and a committee of their num- 

 ber was appointed to consider the question, and report upon 

 it.* The matter was duly investigated, and the results of 

 the committee's deliberations were laid before the Asso- 

 ciation at the ensuing meeting held at Ipswich in 1851. In 

 the course of this inquiry, it was ascertained that neither 

 the Government nor the community at large were deriving 

 from the Indian forests those advantages which they were 

 calculated to afford. Not only was there a most wasteful 

 and uncalled-for destruction of useful material, but numer- 

 ous products — valuable to science, and which might be 

 profitably applied to the interests of social life — lay 

 neglected within the depths of the forests. This report 

 recorded evidence bearing on the state of the forests 

 in Malabar, Canara, Mysore, Travancore, the Tenasserim 

 provinces, the Indian Archipelago, and the wooded tracts 

 which skirt the base of the Himalaya ; and it was dis- 

 tinctly ascertained, that in Malabar, Burmah, and Sind, 

 where some supervision had been exercised, considerable 

 improvement was manifest. 



The forests in the Tenasserim provinces were brought, 

 at a comparatively early date, under a system of conser- 



* The committee consisted of Dr Forbes Eoyle, King's College, London ; 

 Colonel E. Baird Smith, Bengal Engineers ; Colonel B. Strachey, Bengal 

 Engineers, and the compiler of this work. The Eeport was printed in the 

 Proceedings of the British Association for 1851. 



