FORESTRY. 



EDITED BY DR. K. E. FERNOW, 



Director of the New York School of Forestry, Cornell University assisted by Dr. John C. Gifford of the same 



institution. 



It takes 30 years to grow a tree and 30 minutes to cut it down and destroy it. 



FORESTRY ADMINISTRATION IN INDIA. 



WILLARD W. CLARK. 



Of the Philippine Forestry Service. 



PART I. 



In studying forest management as car- 

 ried on by the British Government in India 

 it is advantageous to consider first the his- 

 tory of the development of forestry in that 

 country. The natives of India have been 

 from ages immemorial the greatest enemies 

 of their own forests.. They possess customs 

 handed down from ancient times that must 

 be overcome before good productive forests 

 can be grown. The custom of burning over 

 the forests so as to gain more land for 

 pasture is perhaps the most detrimental. 

 Many thousand square miles where there 

 was once an abundance of forest growth 

 have been made deserts by the continual 

 periodic burning over by fires set by the 

 natives. 



Another custom that is hard on forestry 

 and agriculture as; well, is that of shifting 

 cultivation. A native will burn over a piece 

 of land, plant a crop in the ashes, cultivate 

 it several years, till the fertilizer of ashes 

 has been consumed, and then abandon it. 

 Moving to another piece of forest land he 

 continues his depredations, reducing the 

 forest to a desert. The custom of using 

 dried manure for fuel even where there is 

 an -abundance of wood, seems due to a 

 singular, depraved taste and is responsible 

 for the impoverishment of much land that 

 otherwise might be well fertilized by cow 

 manure. 



Such treatment of the forests, especially 

 in a tropical country, has a detrimental in- 

 fluence. The deterioration of the climate 

 of whole districts and even countries has 

 followed the destruction of forests. The 

 once wooded Dalmatia is now a stony 

 desert. Persia, once one of the granaries 

 of the East, is barren and desolate over a 

 large extent of the country. North 

 Africa, formerly one of the chief corn pro- 

 ducers for Rome, is subject to the severest 

 droughts. Spain, Italy, Sicily, Greece, and 

 Asia Minor have suffered greatly from de- 

 forestation ; and finally, but not least, India 

 has been injured by the destruction of her 

 forests, especially in the Deccan and North- 

 western parts. The influence on the pro- 

 ductiveness of the country due to the de- 

 posit of silt on agricultural land, is one of 

 the most serious results of deforestation. 

 The experience of France, Switzerland and 



473 



China of having many thousand acres o 

 good land made a desert by the deposit on 

 it of silt washed down from the hills from 

 which the forests have been removed, has 

 been repeated in India. Many streams that 

 were navigable for some distance from their 

 mouths have been filled with silt and many 

 millions must be spent annually to keep 

 them open. 



The first forest management in India 

 was applied to the> teak. This tree has been 

 from ancient times considered a royal tree, 

 that is, belonging to the ruler of the dis- 

 trict, and could be cut only under his super- 

 vision. When the British took control of 

 the government the teak naturally fell under 

 their supervision, but its cutting was not 

 at first restricted. The great demand for 

 this fine wood for shipbuilding caused its 

 rapid removal so that it was feared the 

 teak supply would be consumed, and in 

 1805 the first ordinance was passed for the 

 protection of Indian forests. It prohibited 

 the cutting of teak below 9 inches in dia- 

 meter. A conservator of the forests of 

 India, Captain Watson, was appointed in 

 1806. This conservatorship, however, 

 proved unpopular. Many lumbermen who 

 had been prospering when the cutting in 

 the government forests was unprotected 

 were hindred in procuring supplies and 

 therefore used all their influence against 

 the conservatorship. Because of unpopu- 

 larity the conservatorship was abandoned 

 in 1823 and the most unrestricted fellings 

 occurred immediately following that time. 



In 1847 Dr. Gibson showed the govern- 

 ment the physical effects produced on the 

 country by the removal of the forests and 

 was appointed conservator of forests by the 

 Bombay government. In 1855 Lord Dal- 

 housie laid down for the first time the out- 

 line of a permanent forest policy. In 1856 

 Sir Diedrich Brandis was appointed super- 

 intendent of forests in Pegu and undertook 

 the carrying out of a forest policy. He 

 formed working plans and with the aid of 

 a system of native contractors was able to 

 exploit great forest areas and obtain suit- 

 able prices for the forest products. Thus 

 a practical system of working the forests 

 was created under his charge. The size 

 and importance of the Indian forestry serv- 

 ice has steadily grown since Sir Diedrich 

 Brandis took charge. In 1869 there were 

 57 forest officers. In 1882 there were 94. 

 At this latter date the number of forest 

 officers was increased to 1,000 and the 



