126 REVIEWS. 



there is some confusion and discrepancy in the native names and various 

 accounts, cannot be denied. But the Author himself admits many of 

 these faults and blemishes, pleading, however, in extenuation, that the 

 book has been compiled under the disadvantages of the scanty leisure 

 afforded by a short furlough on sick leave. 



With all its shortcomings, we are, however, glad to see the publication 

 of such a work containing a mass of practical and very useful information on 

 the Asiatic forests, especially of Southern India, and their economic products. 

 The want of such a handbook has long been felt ; indeed, there is an urgent 

 demand for a work furnishing full information on the woods of various coun- 

 tries, their availability, probable price, and properties Such a work, appearing 

 concurrently witli the International Exhibition, in which there will be very 

 large collections of woods, about which little or nothing is known, would 

 find a ready sale, and prove of inestimable value to builders, cabinet-makers, 

 turners, and other workers in woods. How little is known generally of the 

 various woods of North America, Asia, Ceylon, and the Eastern Archipelago, 

 Africa, South America, or Australia. We began to collect long since, for 

 our own information, all the current matter available about these. 



Dr Cleghorn, who was appointed Conservator of Forests for the Madras 

 Presidency by Lord Harris, when Governor there, has long given great 

 attention to this important subject. In 1850 he was nominated one of a 

 Committee appointed by the British Association to investigate the system of 

 forest administration in India; and the result of this inquiry, submitted to 

 the meeting at Ipswich in 1851, was, that neither the government nor the 

 community at large were deriving from the Indian forests those advantages 

 which they were calculated to afford. Not only was there a most wasteful 

 and uncalled-for destruction of useful material, but numerous products — 

 valuable to science, and which might be profitably applied to the interests 

 of social life — lay neglected within the depths of the forests. This report 

 recorded evidence bearing on the state of the forests in Malabar, Canara, 

 Mysore, Travancore, the Tenasserim Provinces, the Indian Archipelago, and 

 the wooded districts which skirt the base of the Himalaya. If this subject 

 was important ten years ago, it is much more so now, when the supplies of 

 oak having failed, the Government are at their wits' end for good ship- 

 building woods, and are causing inquiries to be made in every direction for 

 useful substitutes. 



Looking at the extermination of the Teak-forests in Moulmein, and at 

 the injurious "kumara" practice which destroys vast quantities of the 

 most valuable timber, a code of forest regulations for all India is much 

 wanted. Dr Cleghorn well observes that " of all European nations, the 

 English have been most regardless of the value of forests, partly owing to 

 their climate, but chiefly because England has been so highly favoured by 

 vast supplies of coal ; and the emigrants to the United States have shown 

 their indifference to this subject by the reckless destruction of forests in 

 that country, of which they now feel the want. If conservation be 

 needful in temperate climates, how imperative is it in the tropics, where 

 the supplies of water, and, consequently, of food and other produce, are in a 

 great measure dependent on the existence of forests, especially in all the 

 elevated parts of that vast country." 



The bulk of the present work is made up of Dr Cleghorn's several 

 official reports to the Government — the Jury reports on timber and orna- 

 mental woods of the Madras Exhibitions — forest rules, &c. ; and there is 

 appended to the volume a useful, but very incomplete, list of systematic works 

 on the subject, suitable for reference by inquirers. A forest chart is given, 

 and a great number of interesting illustrations. 



This effort of Dr Cleghorn to diffuse information on Indian woods, is 

 certainly to be commended, and the work will be read with interest in 

 many quarters, 



