122 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
very short time, was incredibly rapid. Only when a 
a new arrival, imbued perhaps with preconceived 
notions based on his experience of forest policy in 
another Province, proposed to reverse the decision 
of his predecessors, did the Forest Officer awake 
from his dreams of the millennium to find himself 
again fighting for principles that he had thought 
secure. . 
Fortunately, however, high officials in India were 
then little concerned with forestry. The subject 
was not, in their view, of sufficient Imperial im- 
portance, and, moreover, it was vastly unpopular 
with the people in its interference with pleasant 
and lazy customs; so that even the most versatile 
of Viceroys found no relaxation in remoulding forest 
policy, nor did Lieutenant-Governors pay continued 
attention to it during the period of their rule. All 
of them, no doubt, enjoyed from time to time the 
free life and the escape from worries that the green- 
wood confers, but none of them have their names 
prominently associated with the forests of India ; 
they have, happily, left that honour to the men who 
have spent their lives in the wilds, so that when 
Indian forestry is mentioned the names of foresters, 
and not of statesmen, are recalled. 
And this is as it should be; for consider that 
during the arrival at early maturity of even a fast- 
growing tree some two dozen Viceroys and the same 
number of Consuls have passed on their transient 
careers, and think to what changes of policy, to what 
varied idiosyncrasies, such a one has been exposed. 
And if there still stand some rugged stems, now too 
stiff with age to bend even to the fiercest blast, 
