especially if they arc valuable plantation- ; but the 
Report before us show - how important a source 
of revenue grazing is in the Madras Presidency. 
For the twelve months under notice, no leSB 
a sum than K 2li(5,K01 was obtained from 
grazing fees, grazing contracts ami Bale of grass, or 
about K.55,000 more than for the previous 
months. The improvement is acknowledged to 
be chiefly due to a scheme elaborated by Mb. 
A. W. Lushington of the Kiatnn district whom 
our readers will recognize as an oecasional cor- 
respondent to our columns on the subject of 
coconut production on the adjoining continent. 
A yet larger revenue is expected from this in t her 
ticklish source, as the scheme i- better understood, 
and the friction attendant on all fresh efforts its 
lessened ; but it may be fattened that the 
existence of free — we presume, communal -graz- 
ing grounds is recognised, If only village owners 
of cattle here appreciate the advantage of a 
sufficiency of food for their beasts, there cannot 
fail to be an improvement in the character of 
their stock before long, and an increase in their 
value. As it is, deterioration goes on apace, 
while the enfeebled cattle fall ready victims to 
the diseases that attack them. The .Madras 
Report before us is full of interest, and should 
supply many useful hints to our own Forest De- 
partment. 
We cannot help quoting here in reference to 
the Indian Forest Department, the eloquent pas 
sage with which Rudyard Kipling opens hfe 
weird story of "In the rtukh" 
" Of the wheels of public service that turn under the 
Indian Government, there is none more important, 
than the Departments of Woods and Forests. The 
reboisement of all India is in its hands: or will be 
when Goverement has the money to spend, h s ser- 
vants wrestle with wandering sand-torrents and shifting 
dun s : wattling them at the sides, damming them 
iu front, and pegging them down atop with coarse 
grass and spindling pine after the rules of Nancy. 
They are responsible for all the timber in the State 
forests of the Himalayas, as well as for the denu'led 
hillsides tbat the monsoons wash into dry gullies and 
aching ravines ; each cut a mouth crying aloud what 
carelessness can do. They experiment with battalions 
of foreign trees, and coax the blue gum to take root 
and, perhaps, dry up the C anal fever. In the plains 
the chief part of their duty is to see that the be! t fire- 
lines in the forest reserves are kept clean, so that 
when drough. comes and the cattle starve, they m 
throw the reserve open to the villager's h«H"ds and 
allow the man himse'f to gather sticks. They poll 
and lop for the stacked railway-fuel along the lines 
that burn no coal; they calculate the profit of their 
plvntations to five points of decimals; they are the 
doctors and midwives of the huge teak forests of j 
Upper Burma, the rubber of the Eastern Jungles, 
and the gall-nuts of the South; and they nre always 
hampered by lack of funds. But since Forest Officer's 
business tikes him fir from the beaten ro ds and the 
regular stations, he learns to grow wise in more than I 
wood-lore alone ; to know the people aud the polity I 
of the jungle; meeting tiger, bear, leopard, wild-dog, ! 
and all the deer, not once or twice after days of beat- J 
ing, but again and ag tin in the execution of his duty, < 
He spends much time in saddle or uuder civnVas — 
the friend of newiy planted trees, the associate of 
uncouth ranges and hairy trackers — till the woods, j 
that shows his care in turn set their m-irk upon him 
and he ceases to sing the naughty French songs he [ 
learned at Nancy's, and grows sile.it with the silent I 
things of the underbrush." 
COOLY AGENCIES. 
We do not think there is a single department ! 
connected with the Planting industry in Ceylon 
on which there has been so much written and ' 
in connect ion with which so many experiments 
have been made in past year*,* as that of 
CJooly Agencies in supersession ,,f t | l(J ordinary 
means of recruiting in Southern India. Let 
members of the Association refer to the "Cooiy 
Company '" established 40 year* ago, but which col 
lapsed within a year. Then came the Immi- 
gration Commission officially supported, but 
whose end was gladly welcomed. The hue 
Mr. Robert Dawson was among the earliest to 
be connected with a Cooiy Immigration scheme 
and a very elaborate one it was: but it died 
down for want of support —that i* baaaaM it 
did not answer its purpose, after a com- 
paratively short period. Mr. \V. H. Swan 
wrote very largely anil made many calculations 
to show how an Agency could 1m? profitably 
worker! if every planter in Ceylon subscribed 
and supported the proposal— one impossible 
factor at the outset j — but experiments made in 
the direction he indicated did not answer 
the end in view. The late Mr. Alex. ISrown had 
a ( only Agency at work for the benefit of a 
certain number of proprietors; but it speedilv 
resolved itself into the old knuganv system anil 
Mr. Brown gaveit as bis opinion that no Enropnau 
could compete with the natives iu recruiting in 
the cooiy districts of Southern India under the 
conditions prevalent in Ceylon. " Insidious defum 
tion " affected every Cooiy Agency scheme. New 
regions for coolies north of the present districts 
were explored long before Mr. Voting's mission, and 
Mr. B. J. Voung himself did much to indicate fresh 
re limiting grounds; but did he with his pro- 
longed experience as a planter and his spe- 
cial acquaintance with Southern India as 
Commissioner, recommend that a Cooiy Agency 
under European auspices should be established 
by the Planters' Association in the new any 
more than the old districts? We repeat that a 
more favourable experiment from a business-like 
point of view could scarcely l>e offered than that 
put forward by Messrs. Adamson, MacTaggart&Co. 
of Tnticorin ; because they asked no guarantee nor 
recognition from the Association; they hail an estab- 
lished base of operations ; they did not depend as 
business men on the Cooiy Agency alone; while, 
on the other hand, if it had proved 'successful to the 
degree they expected, they would no doubt be quit* 
prepared to have extended tne scope of recruit- 
ing and establish inland Agencies. This Mr. C. 
R. Martin now proposes to do — that is to estab- 
lish an office in i'ucicoriu with branches in 
Tiunevelly, Madras, and Tanjore. Sic prodded 
he is appointed Agent by the Planters' Asso- 
ciation with a commission per cooiy head re- 
cruited, to be guaranteed, no doubt, "by the As- 
sociation. That would mean an entire revolution 
in the present system, just as much as the Scheme 
from the Northern Districts promulgated yester- 
day ; but what "pucka" planter in Ceylon is 
prepared to abandon or supersede his "kangani"' 
system in favour of the best Cooiy Agency 
ever devised '? We may have any number of 
schemes on paper, and a Cooiy Agent or another 
Commissioner appointed ; but we should like to 
see the list of proprietors or managers who are 
prepared to endorse any such movement by giving 
up themselves, or recommending their neigh- 
bours to give up. their present recognised mode 
of recruiting 1 
We do not for one moment say that it is not open 
to any number of planters iii their private ca- 
pacity to favour and support a Cooiy Agency— 
to give it indeed, the fullest possible trial. All 
our writing in objection is to the attempt t 
involve the Planters' Association officially, in an 
