August, 1911.] 



125 



Timbers. 



save for the fact that the villages 

 around contained some poplars and 

 willows and fruit trees, the site consisted 

 of a barren plain. The planting was 

 first started in 1878 by Mr. Bruce. After 

 the evacuation of Kandahar, the work 

 was taken up mainly by Mr. (now Sir 

 Hugh) Barnes, General Sir Stanley 

 Edwardes, who was in command of the 

 troops, Colonel G ainsford, and Mr. 

 Watson, the forest officer. A Tree Com- 

 mittee was formed and large nurseries 

 established. The trees were obtained 

 from Kandahar, a beginning being made 

 in the winter of 1881-2, when some 

 60,000 cuttings or slips of the chenar or 

 plane tree, poplar and willows were 

 brought on camels from Kandahar aud 

 planted out along the roadsides and in 

 the gardens. The planes were put on 

 the main road, the Lytton Road. They 

 form a magnificent avenue, now thirty 

 years old, which gives a most grateful 

 shade in summer considerably lowering 

 the temperature. The growth of the 

 trees was wonderfully rapid, irrigation 

 being then, as now, employed to water 

 them ; for all the water in the country 

 is brought in channels from the - sources 

 of the springs, its value being fully 

 understood by the inhabitants, who 

 show great ingenuity in constructing 

 these water channels. Other roads were 

 lined with poplars or willows, and if a 

 mistake was made it was in planting 

 the trees too close, and in planting the 

 avenues on any one road of one species 

 of tree only ; and this mistake had to be 

 paid for later on somewhat dearly, to 

 which allusion may be made. The trees 

 were attacked by cerambyx beetle pest 

 (JEolesthes sarta), the grubs of which 

 fed in the green inner bark — the grow- 

 ing layer— of the trees, and resulted in 

 numbers of the poplars and widows 

 having to be cut out and burnt. 



Not only in Quetta, but also in all the 

 cantonments throughout Baluchistan, 

 the planting of trees forms one of the 

 chief recreations of the British com- 

 munity, so great is the distaste of man- 

 kind, accustomed and used to tree and 

 plant growth to exist without it, The 

 whole of the work is carried out by the 

 political and military officers stationed 

 in that portion of the country, few if 

 any of whom had, before reaching the 

 country, any planting knowledge, and 

 many of whom had confessedly pre- 

 viously taken but little interest in the 

 growth of trees. Amongst the most 

 enthusiastic of the planting community 

 at the time of my visit was General Sir 

 Henry Smith-Dorrien, now commanding 

 at Aldershot, but then commanding the 

 Quetta division, and he attacked and 



wiped out the " borer," as they called 

 the beetle pest in his cantonments with 

 as much keenness as he planted trees. 



I have alluded to the fact that the 

 major portion of the land surface of the 

 globe was formerly clothed with vast 

 primaeval forests. 



In the opening phases of his connec- 

 tion v\ith the forest man waged a puny 

 and ineffective war against the relent- 

 less growth of the forest, and had as 

 much as he could do to keep a small clear- 

 ing round his abode, and in many cases 

 this was not attempted. Regions 

 in the tropical world exist at the pre- 

 sent day where this unequal and ne\er- 

 ending strife between man and the 

 luxuriant vegetation of the forest still 

 goes on usually in favour of the forest- 

 With increase of numbers permanent 

 clearings came into being, but the whole 

 of the materials for house-buildings, &c„ 

 came from the forest. At the present 

 day the aborigines of Central India and 

 the Assam and North Burma Hills, as is 

 the case with aborigines in other parts 

 of the world, construct their habitations 

 of wood, grass, and leaves ; their house- 

 hold crockery and glass consists of 

 gourds, with lengths cf bamboo for 

 the wine-glasses, whilst a considerable 

 portion of their food consists of edible 

 fruits and roots and leaves and shoots 

 of forest trees, and when they can 

 procure it, meat from the wild animals of 

 the same forest. 



But man, with increased numbers and 

 civilisation, began a ruthless war against 

 the forest, and is still carrying it on in 

 America, Canada, and elsewhere with 

 the result which now faces us. In Great 

 Britain, once covered with forests, we 

 have no forests at all and few woods of 

 any size, and are at the present moment 

 entirely dependent on our timber, &c, 

 supplies being brought to us from 

 outside. And the sources of this supply 

 are diminishing, and are also being 

 yearly indented on to a greater extent 

 by other countries. 



But long before the awakening as to 

 the importance of forests commenced in 

 Europe— a matter of a century of two 

 only — man, the man in the rapidly grow- 

 ing cities and towns had realised the 

 importance of the tree and the place 

 the tree held in his existence. His 

 primitive instincts, laid to rest whilst 

 engaged in ruthlessly exterminating his 

 friend, were aroused into an active 

 repentance when he no longer had that 

 friend at his door, and could no longer 

 watch it garb itself in its brilliant 

 seasonal changes of raiment, and no 

 longer had its protection for himself 



