262 
THE TROPIOAL AQRICULTURtST 
[October i, 1890 . 
■Qsefnl timber trees. This system has been tried et 
intervals for years past, as already mentioned, near 
Mirigama, with good results, the areas so dealt with 
beingnow covered with a vigorous growth of young jak 
trees. It is proposed to modif^and extend this system 
wherever the conditions are favourable and the 
villagers willing, and where it cannot be adopted the 
forest will be coppiced. Late in the year two surveyors 
were detached to make surveys of the available Crown 
forest and waste land in the neighbourhood of thevillages 
above mentioned, separating the village claims and 
holdings, with a view to constituting these forests 
permanent timber and fuel reserves. By the end of 
the year they had surveyed an area of 3,850 acres. 
It is a matter for regret that so much land has 
been alienated in the past that our nearest source of 
supply of fuel by rail for Colombo from Crown forests 
lies more than thirty miles distant from the city. 
Saotle Plots. — The Department is at present with- 
out reliable data as to the rotation on which our 
forest should be worked. This is of course due to the 
infancy of the Department, and time alone can supply 
the information that is wanted. Instructions have been 
sent to the Assisant Conservators to select here and 
there sample areas, in which all the trees of more 
valuable species are to be measured at breast height once 
a year at the same season, and a record kept in order to 
ascertain the rate of growth. The data derived from 
these sample plots will enable us to determine the 
exploitable age of the trees and consequently the 
rotations on which the forests should be worked. Up 
to this the Assistant Conservator of the North-Central 
Province has alone made any progress in this work. 
He cut out two blocks of one acre each, the blocks 
being again sub-divided into two, one halt being left 
untouched, the other half thinned of the useless trees. 
Enomehation Suevevs. — A memorandum has also 
been circulated showing the different ways of making 
enumeration surveys so as to ascertain the value of 
a standing crop in a forest. None have as yet been 
made except some rough ones in the Mirigama forest. 
These were carried out in order to ascertain the 
number of cubic yards of firewood obtainable from 
different classes of forest, including the jak plantations. 
Those of the jak plantations were also useful in order 
to determine the probable annual volume increment 
per acre of this particular kind of timber. 
All this is in acoordanoe with the established princi- 
ples of forestry; and as the local experience of a series 
of yeaiB is collected, a body of information re- 
garding the best timber trees, indigenous and exotic, 
to cultivate, and the best mode of treating such 
trees so as to render them most successful in growth 
and most profitable at maturity, will be available 
to the general public as well as the officers of the 
Department and the Government. For the provi- 
sion of steady and plentiful supplies of fuel, it is 
obvious that trees which most readily coppice will 
be preferable, provided the calorific qualities of the 
timber are good. — Ool. Clarke deals at length with 
the protection and improvement of the forest staff 
and as an illustration of the value of watchers who 
do their duty he states : — 
For nur reserved fovents paid watchers are an absolute 
necessity. The Assistant Conservator, Eastern Pro- 
vince, reports that since the appointment of a 
watcher for the eastern shore of the Battioaloa lake, 
a large amount of timber theft has been stopped, and 
the result has been to compel buyers to come to 
the depot for timber which they had previously 
imrcbased from the regular timber thieves. 
Ool. Clarke agrees with the general opinion that 
the Forest Ordinance requires important amend- 
ments. Amongst the rest, provisions ought certainly 
to be made for securing the punishment of thieves 
who steal timber from the Government forests 
although such forests may not have been proclaimed 
ns reserved. Prosecutions, it appears, have some- 
times failed for reasons which seem inexplicable 
In the Eastern Province a bad character received 
six months’ imprisoumont for threatening a forest 
watcher with a knife. A contractor was mulcted in 
B.100 compensation for damaging Crown property by 
unnecessarily felling trees to get at other ones. 
In the Northern Province five men were proved to 
have felled and been possessed of eighteen logs cut in 
Crown forest, but they were acquitted, because the 
wood was not cut from reserved forest. 
In another case, in which a wealthy Sinhalese pro- 
prietor had been helping himself on a large scale to 
thousands of saplings from Crown forests, for use 
on an extensive coconut estate in the Chilaw dis- 
trict, his agents and carters being caught red-handed 
in my presence, the prosecution fell through owing to 
some legal technicality. 
Col, Clarke then proceeds to discuss the very 
important and difficult question of ohena cultiva- 
tion. On this subject widely divergent opinions 
have been and no doubt are still held by officers of 
Government,^ some leaning exclusively to the side 
of Crown rights, while others, in their zeal for 
the cause of the too often half-starved people 
(largely because they shirk the hard work of 
culti vating “ wet lands” with rice), make no 
account of the interests of the Crown, which are, 
however, the interests of the general community. In 
this as m other cases there must be a happy mean, 
in which the interests of both parties meet. If 
the cultivators are expected to provide pasturage for 
their cattle, sufficient areas of suitable land must be 
left in connection with villages for the purpose. 
Exceptions, too, must be made in times of distress, 
such as protracted drought has now produced in 
the Eastern Province. On the other hand it is 
intolerable that well grown and valuable timber 
trees, which cannot be replaced in a generation, or 
more, should be sacrificed for the sake of a few 
props of Indian corn, millets and pumpkins. This 
is how Col, Clarke deals with the question : — 
Regulation and Control of Chena Cultivation. 
— The cultivation of dry grain in their henas or 
chenas, although one of the most wasteful forms of 
agriculture and belonging to the rudest condition of 
society, is a necessity for the people of those districts 
where rice cannot be cultivated for want of water. 
So long as this form of cultivation is kept within 
proper bounds, that is to say, so long as the people 
cultivate dry grain in the waste lands set apart for 
that purpose and do not abuse their license by 
clearing valuable forest, not much harm is done. 
But unfortunately the headmen have in the past 
connived at the destruction of valuable high forest 
by hena cultivators. A case in point may be seen 
in the report of the Deputy Conservator on the 
Eastern Province, extracts of which are annexed to this 
report (Appendix C.) It is quite true that in the case 
above quoted the chief headmen was only recently 
appointed, but this shows the danger of leaving a matter 
of such importance in the hands of inexperienced 
men. The Government Agent has now consented to 
let a forest officer accompany headman inspecting 
jungle for which hena applications have been sent in. 
In order to bring this class of cultivation under 
better control, the period of hena rotation for each 
district of the Island where paddy cultivation is pre- 
carious should be fixed, and a block of hena for each 
village, calculated on the number of inhabitants in 
it, should be permanently marked oS and assigned to it 
for Cultivation, a margin even being allowed for slight 
expansion. Owing to the vigilance of the forest 
staff, oases of illicit hena cultivation were brought 
up repeatedly in the magistrate’s court, but the fines 
being in some cases nominal, not only were the 
officers disheartened, but the people were emboldened 
to repeat their offence where the infraction of the 
law was so lightly regarded. The Southern Province, 
especially Giruwa pattu east and Hambantota district, 
is now a vast sea of hena, owing to the reckless 
manner in which villagers have been allowed to de- 
vastate the country in the past. Even some of the 
old forest reserves set apart by Government Proola- 
matiou iu 1865 have been attacked and ruthlessly 
