174 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF AGRICULTURE. 



manner in which civil servants of the Crown are appointed. As there is no forestry 



school in Great Britain, candidates have to attend the schools of France or Germany. 

 For the qualification of native forest rangers a forest school has been established iu 

 Northern India, to which four forest divisions, situated in the plains and in the hills 

 of the Himalayas, have been attached. The arrangement is that eight months in the 

 year are devoted to practical work in the school forests, while the remaining four 

 months, during the slack season in summer, are devoted to theoretic;) 1 instruction in 

 mat hematics, the natural sciences, and forestry. Surveying is taught in the school 

 and in the lields. All these students are taught in English, as they come from many 

 different provinces. Recently a lower class has been established for those who only 

 aspire to the certificate of forester— a class intermediate between forest rangers and 

 forest guards. To them, instruction is given in Hindustani. The display of timber 

 and forest products from India constituted one of the features of the exhibition. 

 „ From Calcutta was sent what was known as the H Index collection," which comprises 

 800 specimens of the different chief woods of India. The collection is a museum 

 collection, each specimen being marked with its scientific name and alphabetically 

 arranged. Its geographical location is also indicated. Many of these woods, such 

 as the well-known ebony, the blackwood, and sandalwood, are worked up into fur- 

 niture and cabinets of a beautiful kind. The richness of India to produce such ar- 

 ticles of commerce as gums, oil seeds, perfumery, medicinal barks, and dye-stuffs was 

 also illustrated. In the specimens shown, great commercial possibilities are suggested. 

 From the Andaman and Nicobar Islands some splendid specimens of wood were 

 shown. One slab of the tree Calophyllium inophyllium, known to the natives as " Poon," 

 was unsurpassed by anything in the exhibition. It was of great size, and in color was 

 like light polished mahogany. There were also splendid logs of "Padowk" {Ptero- 

 carpua indicti6) whose coloring varies to a remarkable extent in different trees, rang- 

 ing from that of cedar to dark mahogany, and frequently being found of a deep scarlet. 

 An evergreen tree indigenous to those islands, which is used for fancy cabinet work, 

 is the marble wood (IHosjiyros kurzii), the texture of which is alternately streaked 

 gray and black. It may be mentioned before leaving India that attempts have been 

 made to introduce into the Peninsula trees from other countries. Of the trees of 

 Northern Europe and America none have been raised on a large scale, as the cli- 

 mate is so different in India; The mahogany tree was brought from the West Indies 

 about Dinety years ago, and there are a number of large trees in gardens near Cal- 

 cutta which produce timber equal to that of the American tree. Great exertions, says 

 Dr. Brandis, have been made to grow this tree on a large scale in forests, but the suc- 

 cess has, with few exceptions, been indifferent. In Pegu, however, the mahogany is 

 likely to succeed as a forest tree. The Rain tree (Pithecolobium saman) of tropical 

 America, whicb is a rapid grower, has succeeded wonderfully well in most of the 

 moister districts of tropical India : and several tropical American trees which yield 

 caoutchou rubber, notably Manih ot glaziovii, have been tried with success. The Pa- 

 per tree of Japan, which is grown in a coppice in the same way as observed in En- 

 gland, is cultivated in Assam and Barman, and promises to be an important produc- 

 tion ; and another foreign tree which has succeeded splendidly in India is the Blue 

 gum of Australia {Eucalyptus globulm). The blue gum was first introduced into 

 India in 1843, and there are trees at Ootacarauud thirty years old 110 feet high and 13 

 feet in girth. The mean annual production of wood in the blue-gum plantations— as 

 ascertained by actual survey — has been at the rate of 10 tons, or 500 cubic feet, of 

 solid wood per acre, which is more than five times the quantity produced by high 

 timber forests in Europe. 



CEYLON. 



A very interesting collection of the products of Ceylon was sent to the exhibition 



through the enterprise of one of its planters, Mr. I. Alexander, of Udapusala wa. A 

 very interesting part of the collection was that relating to the harvesting of the chin- 

 chona bark, and its preparation for market. Last year as much as 7,000,000 pounds 

 of the bark were exported from the island — this industry being one of great impor- 

 tance in it. Formerly the trees were regularly " shaved" with small planes for their 

 bark, but this method of "harvesting " has been mostly given up. The ehinchoua is 

 now "coppiced," and a rotation in dealing with them observed. One of the species, 

 succirubra, is a fast grower, attaining, in the low country, to a height of 50 feet in twenty 

 years. The products of the cocoa-nut and Palmyra palm are also of great importance 

 in Ceylon. The island of Ceylon has long been famed for its coffee. For some years 

 past, however, the cultivation of the coffee-plant has greatly decreased, a blight in 

 the shape of a fungus which stripped the plants of their leaves, having done great 

 damage in many districts. Not a few of the planters have tried tea as a substitute 

 for coffee, and with great success. The fauna of the island was represented by a 

 small collection of stuffed birds, conspicuous among which are the snake eagle, the 

 painted snipe, the jungle crow, and the jungle cock; and there was shown a small 

 but nicely got up collection of butterflies and beetles with their larvae — most of which 



