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our own time has helped to increase the injurious clearance of forests in 
India. The requirements are of two kinds, timber for sleepers and buildings, 
and small wood for fuel. The deodar timber, which in Northern India is 
the wood chiefly used for sleepers, as it is not liable to the attack of white 
ants (other woods have to be protected by creosoting, &c.), has been chiefly 
supplied from native hill states. It is true that under native manage- 
ment there was much wasteful and indiscriminate felling of the timber, the 
rulers looking only to immediate gain, regardless of the future. The British 
Government has taken a lease of some of the principal hill forests of deodali 
and other pines, and in the hands of the Forest Department the felling is 
under careful and systematic management, due care being taken for repro- 
duction of timber trees and increase, in certain places, of forest area. The 
provision of fuel, and the management of the jungle tracts in ihe plains, 
from which fuel supplies are obtained, are likewise under careful regulation ; 
and extensive fuel plantations in selected places provide for continuous 
supply and reproduction. The untrustworthiness of the meteorological 
registers, to which allusion has been made, was due to imperfect arrange- 
ments, imperfectly qualified agency, and imperfect means of compiling 
and examining the results. Matters are differently managed now, and 
a competent meteorological department has been organised. Many 
have heard the old story of the native official at a rural station 
(who, among other duties, had charge of the meteorological instru- 
ments), making things ready, on one occasion, for the expected visit of 
the Commissioner of the Division, who would be sure to ask to see the 
meteorological instruments. They could all be examined and read except 
the rain-gauge. The Commissioner might be disappointed if it had nothing 
to show, so a jug of water was poured in that he might find something to 
observe in the rain-gauge too ! We may fully trust that, under Mr. Blan- 
ford, meteorological records will be obtained of great value and importance 
to India. 
Surgeon-General Gordon, M.D., C.B. — I have been a good deal in 
India, and can endorse almost everything that has been stated by 
Sir Joseph Fayrer, especially with regard to the important bearing 
which meteorology has upon certain kinds of disease. Sir J oseph 
Fayrer has alluded to the prevalence of particular kinds of disease, 
according to the particular atmospheric conditions of the country. In 
so far as those atmospheric conditions at particular periods, or at the 
same period of the year, are very variable in different parts of the large 
continent of India, so do we find the phenomena of disease vary in a similar 
manner. That is to say, the disease which prevails in one part of India, and 
at one period of the year, differs in many respects in its phenomena from a 
similar disease prevailing in another part of India. I noticed that it was 
represented by fcrir Joseph Fayrer that there are certain epidemics which 
have a natural relation to meteorological conditions, while there are others 
with regard to which similar conditions do not seem to be established. 
