FORESTR 1 
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officers of that department are trained partly at the Indian 
School of Engineering at Cooper’s Hill, partly with foresters 
in Scotland, and a portion of the course of study is at one of 
the foreign schools in Germany or France. This system has 
its advantages, for whilst a young man has some difficulty in 
fully profiting by education abroad in a language not his own, 
yet it must be remembered that the climate in summer in 
Central Germany and Southern France is much more like what 
is experienced in India than anything we are accustomed to 
at home. That there is room for much to be done in India is 
shown by this, that whereas in Germany one quarter of the 
land is under trees, in our Eastern Empire, so far as I can see, 
the proportion of forest is considerably less. 
Can we then wonder at the famine of two years ago ? 
Twenty years before that we were also face to face with a similar 
calamity, and it was then pointed out by experts in the Times 
newspaper and other periodicals, that the famines that recur in 
India and other countries from time to time, are due to the 
thoughtless destruction of forests that had been going on, 
almost unchecked, for thousands of years. In the Journal of 
Forestry , in 1877, it was said that the little that Government had 
done through the Indian forest department was as a drop in the 
ocean, and life and energy was called for to be thrown into the 
business, and it was stated that the only way to produce more 
rain in India and effectually stop famines, was to keep on 
planting trees till the climate was restored to a proper equili- 
brium. It was useless to construct reservoirs and irrigation 
works without creating a supply of water to fill them. 
It is much to be regretted, not only that we have no English 
school of forestry, but also that the rudiments of the science are 
not taught in every school throughout the country. We pay 
heavily, it seems, for teaching our children some subjects that 
are altogether impractical and useless. Were this changed, 
persons when leaving these shores to seek their fortunes in the 
colonies would not look upon the forest as an enemy to be 
destroyed in reckless fashion, but as a precious possession, 
which a proper proportion of should be jealously preserved for 
our own good and the good of those that come after us. Trees 
in low-lying situations that favour malarious swamps, as at the 
mouths of some of our colonial rivers, cannot, of course, be too 
soon removed. 
In these days we hear much of Rhodesia and the Chartered 
Company ; the settlers in that country feel the want of shade, 
and it is satisfactory to observe that Mr. Cecil Rhodes fully 
understands the importance of forestry, so we may hope that 
those who come under his influence may imbibe his foresight in 
this respect, and that we may soon see that land, where Syrians 
in the time of Solomon worked the gold mines, and destroyed 
the forests to make charcoal for smelting purposes, replanted by 
our colonists. 
