EARLY DAYS IN OUDH 43 
and perseverance this lesson has long since been 
learnt in the Oudh forests, and the struggle is now 
transferred to other Provinces where the Forest 
Officer is working as a pioneer in the van of civiliza- 
tion, securing for the State a property which, 
when the country is settled, when landownership, so 
dear to the Eastern heart, is assured, and when the 
benefits of a regulated forest to an agricultural 
population are understood, will be perhaps more 
valued by the people themselves than even by their 
rulers; for the first have a personal and practical 
experience that forest products are indispensable 
to their welfare, while the others can only form an 
estimate of the inconveniences of strict forest con- 
servancy. 
Besides the protection of the forest there was its 
exploitation by means of departmental operations, 
a now antiquated system, which afforded to the 
subordinates unlimited opportunity for bribery and 
oppression, and occupied the whole time of the 
Forest Officer in detailed accounts which were im- 
possible to check in the field. In those days the 
forester was beyond everything a timber-merchant 
and a revenue-collector, and this state of affairs 
naturally hindered silvicultural progress, for no time 
was left for the higher professional duties of the 
staff. After the “ Holi” festival, which takes place 
about the end of March or beginning of April, the 
workmen left the forest, where malaria again began 
to be prevalent, and returned to their homes to reap 
their crops or to revert to the urban occupations of 
the next seven months; and the forester was then 
_left to watch through the fire season, till the first 
