276 
KEW GARDENS 
“ The millennia during which these Sequoia trees must 
have remained in statu quo, proving the long duration of 
existing conditions of climate, are but as minutes compared 
with the time occupied by the migration of this very species 
or its ancestors north and south in the continent of America. 
Whatever might otherwise be the extent of the Sequoia s 
travels, they are now at an end. Man has pronounced the 
sentence, ‘ Thus far shalt thou go, and no further.’ The doom 
of these noble groves is sealed. No less than five saw-mills 
have recently been established in the most luxuriant of them, 
and one of these mills alone cut, in 1875, two million feet of 
big-tree lumber; and a company has lately been formed to 
cut another grove. 
“ In the operations of the Californian wood-cutters the 
waste is prodigious. The young manageable trees are first 
felled; after which the forest is fired to clear the ground and 
get others out, and thus the saplings are destroyed. More 
destructive yet are the operations of the slieep-farmers, who 
fire the herbage to improve the grazing, and whose flocks of 
tens of thousands of sheep devour every green thing, and 
more effectually than the locust. The devastation of the 
Californian forests is proceeding at a rate which is utterly 
incredible except to an eye-witness.” 
The value of the wood annually wasted through fires at the 
present time in the United States is estimated by Professor 
Sargeant at twenty-five million dollars. 
Indian Forests. 
In India fortunately the state of things is very different. 
For a long time a large area of forest has been under 
Government protection, and there is a regular forest depart¬ 
ment fully organised as a branch of the Civil Service. The 
results have been most satisfactory, for not only have the 
forests been kept up for the benefit of succeeding generations, 
and new trees planted when old ones have been cut down, 
but the department yields a handsome profit annually. 
Twenty years ago its annual receipts were 36 lakhs of rupees, 
and the charges were 22 lakhs, leaving a balance on the right 
side of £140,000 a year. In 1882-3 the receipts were 95 
lakhs of rupees, and the expenses 60 lakhs, leaving a balance 
of £350,000 on the right side. Dr. Brandis, who for nineteen 
years has been the director of the department, has lately 
retired. The total area of protected forest is now 35,242 
square miles (about two-tliirds of the area of England). 
To individualise the different timber trees is of course one 
of the principal tasks with which the officers have to deal. 
