KASHMIR AND ASSAM 275 
in Kashmir the traveller must fix his mind and his 
eyes on the landscape, and forget the trivialities of 
common daily life; yet it would be well to make a 
competent person responsible that during such 
abstraction these trivialities be not entirely for- 
gotten, lest cholera, typhoid, or smallpox, spoil his 
holiday, and maybe ruin his constitution. 
In the beginning of 1906 a visit was paid to 
Assam. Though it is possible to obtain some idea 
of the forestry conditions of a Province from a study 
of reports and other literature, such knowledge is 
not an adequate equipment for an advisory officer, 
who should have a good insight into the customs 
and requirements of the population, and some 
acquaintance with local conditions of labour and 
commerce. It is only by visiting the country con- 
cerned that he can form opinions useful for future 
guidance or offer advice based on experience gathered 
elsewhere ; he is a student as well as a professor, 
and in learning he is more likely to be helped by 
an executive officer, who is intimately acquainted 
with the locality, than by an administrative officer, 
who perhaps has only lately taken over a new post, 
and who may be too apt to lay stress on know- 
ledge gained under quite different conditions. I 
owe acknowledgment to many earnest executive 
Forest Officers, both for affording information and 
making suggestions for improvements the intro- 
duction of which we have had the satisfaction of 
witnessing. 
Mr. P. Coventry was then in charge of the 
Government rubber plantations of Fvcus elastica in 
the Province ; these were then coming into bearing, 
