268 FOREST LIFE AND SPORT IN INDIA 
may generally be qualified by a term that implies 
both violence and quantity. Probably the heaviest 
rainfall occurs in India between the plains and an 
elevation of 7,000 feet. Above that height it 
diminishes gradually, till the region of perpetual 
snow is reached. The yearly average rainfall in 
the plains districts is, therefore, much less than on 
the higher ground, from whence, however, both the 
surface and the subterranean water flows. 
The importance, therefore, of restricting the evil 
effects of heavy rainfall, more especially in the area 
from the foot of the mountains up to the tree limit, 
is undoubted, and, moreover, Nature has from time 
immemorial busied herself in affording this neces- 
sary protection without the approval—sometimes 
without even the knowledge—of man. Her work is 
arduous, for so well counterbalanced are her forces 
that a moment’s inattention to any one of them is 
followed by the preponderance of another, and thus 
when, in the struggle between water and vegetation, 
man, interferes with wasteful grazing, firing, and 
felling, Nature retires defeated from the struggle ; 
nor will she without much coaxing again furnish 
her powerful aid at the time when, experienced 
through disaster, man returns to replant the waste 
places, and to re-erect the only permanent defence 
that can be devised against alternate floods and 
drought. 
In a country where agriculture is the staple 
industry, the preservation of hill forests becomes a 
necessity ; but there is also a secondary reason for 
their protection, for water not only provides the 
medium to dissolve the plant food in the soil and 
