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tructive practice is gradually and cautiously checked, by reclaiming these people from 

 agricultural savagery, and inducing them to plough lands, and raise yearly crops by 

 ordinary husbandry. 



"According to the latest returns there appear to be 29,600 square miles of demar- 

 cated reserve forests, 3,500 square miles of protected areas, and 35,000 square miles of 

 unreserved forests, or 68,000 square miles in all. This appears a comparatively small 

 area for so large an empire, especially when it is remembered that of this not more than 

 one half is effectually preserved. Some extensive forest tracts exist, however, in the 

 Madras Presidency, of which a return remains to be rendered. There are, further, 31,000 

 acres of plantations in various districts." 



These plantations, I may remark, are those commenced by the foresters under Dr. 

 Brandis, and are being every year added to at the rate of some thousands of acres. It 

 may be noticed that the forest officers trained in Europe for India, and at work there 

 now, number forty-six out of a staff of ninety-three, who have, of course, an immense 

 number of subordinates. 



Concerning other countries, it may be generally remarked, that all the nations of 

 continental Europe are moving in forestry matters, and that there are many schools 

 besides those I have mentioned. 



South Australia. 



The colonies of Australia and New Zealand are working earnestly in the matter of 

 tree culture. In South Australia there is, we are told, far too little woodland. The 

 consequences are that so arid is the country in parts that the reports state they can 

 never expect to grow wheat unless the rainfall can be, by the assistance of plantations or 

 otherwise, increased. 



South Australia has moved vigorously in the matter. They have appointed a Conser- 

 vator of Forests, Mr. J. E. Brown, F.L.S., who has written a valuable work on tree 

 culture there. Reserves have been mapped out, of which one is about fifty thousand 

 acres, another nine thousand, another twenty thousand, with smaller ones of six or seven 

 hundred — the larger evidently, intended to be improved into forests on the European plan 

 — the smaller as nurseries and seed-bed for young plants. Houses have been built for 

 nurserymen, and all suitable buildings erected, and forest rangers and police appointed. 

 The Forest Board had been in existence three years in 1879, and from the report of opera- 

 tions sent in by Mr. Brown in that year, giving full and admirably worded details con- 

 cerning the soil, trees, and method of procedure adopted and to be adopted on all the 

 reserves, there is little doubt that South Australia will, considering how rapid growth, 

 when encouraged, is there, (twice as rapid as in Britain) soon possess large and valuable 

 forests, fit to yield yearly a regular and large quantity of timber, without either clearing 

 or injuring the woodland reserves. 



New Zealand. 



To show the destruction of timber even where unnecessary for clearing, it may be 

 observed that it is evident New Zealand possessed, when first colonized to any extent, in 

 1830, much land in a prairie or unwooded state, as her area was sixty-six million acres, 

 and her wooded' area twenty million acres. However, by 1868 she had destroyed five 



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