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way there is an insufficient supply for the Madras Presidency, which is made up by importing timber from Ceylon."

"Looking to the extent of India, and reading of interminable jungles, it may seem a work of supererogation to talk of the deficiency of timber or of the necessity of protecting its forests. Timber to be valuable must be of the proper kind, of the proper age, and at proper distances, that is, in accessible situations. As might have been expected, from continual drains being made on these forests, without adequate measures having been adopted to keep up the supply, a continued and increasing deficiency has been experienced in all parts of India, which has frequently attracted the attention of the Indian and Home Governments, so that in the Bombay Presidency numerous reports have been made on the state of the teak forests, and measures adopted for their improvement, without as yet much benefit."

The following is the summary of the conclusions of the Committee who drew up the British Association's Report of 1851

“(1) That over large portions of the Indian Empire there is at present an almost uncontrolled destruction of the indigenous forests in progress, from the careless habits of the native population.

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(2) That in Malabar, Tenasserim and Sind, where supervision is exercised, considerable improvement has already taken place.

(3) That these improvements may be extended by a rigid enforcement of the forest regulations and the enactment of additional provisions of the following character, viz. careful maintenance of the forests by the plantation of seedlings in place of mature trees removed, nurseries being established in the immediate neighbourhood and prohibition of cutting until trees are well grown with rare and special exceptions for peculiar purposes. In cases of trees yielding gums, resins, or other valuable products, that greater care be taken in tapping or notching the trees, most serious danger at present resulting from neglect in this operation.

"(4) That especial attention should be given to the preservation and maintenance of the forests occupying tracts unsuited for culture, whether by reason of altitude or peculiarities of physical structure.

"(5) That in a country to which the maintenance of its water supplies is of such extreme importance, the indiscriminate clearance of forests around the localities whence these supplies are derived is greatly to be deprecated.

"(6) That as much local ignorance prevails as to the number and nature of valuable forest products, measures should be taken to supply, through the officers in charge, information calculated to diminish such ignorance.

"(7) That, as much information which may be of practical utility is contained in the Manuscript Reports and Proceedings of the late Plantation Committee,' amounting to over 1070 pages of MSS., it is desirable that the same should, if practicable, be abstracted and given to the public." The Plantation Committee originated under the administration of the Marquis of Hastings, but the above recommendation was unfortunately never given effect to.

The above forms a good summary of the position of the Forestry question at the period here dealt with.

CHAPTER XII

THE INITIAL START IN FOREST CONSERVANCY IN THE MADRAS

AND BOMBAY, 1850-1857

T has been shown that Bombay took the first step in appointing an administrative Conservator of Forests,

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that is a Conservator who should not be merely a commercial timber exploiter, but whose chief duties should be in connection with the superintendence and amelioration of the forests themselves. In 1847 Dr. Gibson had been appointed to this post, a post he had informally filled for several years previously as Interim Conservator, in addition to his own appointment as Superintendent of the Botanical Gardens.

We have also seen that the Madras Government took advantage of the existence of the Bombay Conservatorship to obtain advice from Gibson with the object of straightening out some of the tangle into which their own forest administration had become involved during the past half century.

Gibson's appointment in Bombay and the work he accomplished there was not without its effect on the Madras Government, and in 1856 they took a similar step and appointed Dr. Cleghorn as Conservator in that Presidency.

The work of the period under review was essentially of a transitory nature. The system of working the forests was gradually passing over from the hand-to-mouth policy pursued during half a century. This policy had as its primary objects the satisfying, or attempt to satisfy, the complaints and demands of the lessees of the forests and those whose claims to private ownership had been assumed without enquiry to be legally sound. These persons, owing to the mistaken policy introduced in the early days for securing the requirements of timber by Government departments, had been allowed to obtain a definite hold over large areas of forest. The secondary object was to assure to Government the provision of its full timber demands for the dockyards, gun-carriage factories,

public works and so forth. The new ideas, which had come to be seen as essential, were concerned with the correct management of the forests not solely with a view to assuring future timber supplies. It was slowly being realised that unrestricted Kumri cultivation was harmful, alike in the great waste of timber thereby engendered and also, in many parts, to the direct interests of the ryots owing to the ensuing decrease in the water supplies and to resultant erosion covering up valuable fertile lands. The same effects resulted from the areas cleared for coffee plantations, though this latter question scarcely advanced beyond an academic discussion during the period. What had been grasped by now was the great decrease in accessible timber forests; the fact that vast areas of fine forests had been cleared off in the neighbourhood of the floatable streams; and that the destruction of the remaining accessible forest was being hastened by the commencement made in railway construction, although this new method of communication had not made very great progress during the period.

The Conservators drew up some very valuable and instructive reports as a result of personal investigations carried out during tours made throughout the charges to which they had been appointed. These to a great extent recapitulated matters which have been already dealt with in previous chapters. But a certain amount of interesting material regarding the first beginnings of regular conservancy merits notice.

Bombay Presidency. Gibson's work in Bombay was of a varied character. He undertook several tours through the forests in parts of the Presidency and drew up some valuable reports on these tours. He paid particular attention to the destruction caused to the forests by the Kumri or shifting cultivation, and pointed out the evil effects resulting from this primitive form of agriculture both in the drying up of springs and streams and in the silting up of rivers and creeks, thereby destroying natural harbours which had existed in the lower parts of these rivers and on the coast.

It was due to Gibson's untiring crusade against the Kumri cultivation that by the end of the period under review it had come to be greatly restricted in the Bombay Presidency. In a Memorandum dated 23rd May, 1860, written by Mr. J. D. Bourdillon, Secretary to the Government of Madras, on a Report on this subject by Cleghorn, the Secretary notes that

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in Mysore the practice of Kumri cultivation has been entirely abolished, and that in the jungle districts of Bombay it has been so very nearly." Gibson, following Conolly's example in Malabar, also devoted much attention to raising young teak plants to form plantations.

Allusion has been made in the previous period (p. 122) to the levying of fees on the felling of jungle timber by reimposing the levies formerly collected for Government by the Land and Customs Department along with the transit dues. Government sanctioned this proposal in 1851.

The system adopted with regard to the collection of these fees was, generally speaking, to farm the right to collect them, except in lesser divisions and in particular localities where the collections were made under direct management by an establishment of carcoons (clerks) and peons, who were posted at the various points through which the timber and other forest produce had to pass. These establishments were, until 1854, entertained through the medium of the kamavisdars of the several collectorates in which the fees were levied, and were paid out of these fees as collected, the balance only being carried to the public account. But after 1854 the payment of these fee-collecting establishments, wherever employed, was vested in the Conservator, the entire proceeds of the fees as received being remitted to the credit of the Forest Department, the charge for the collecting establishment being debited against it.

The forests under Gibson extended over a distance, from north to south, of 550 miles, but with the exception of these fee-collecting establishments, the only establishment he had to carry out the work of his large charge throughout this period was the small one sanctioned in 1845. The only monthly sum he was entitled to disburse, out of this sanctioned establishment, for the pay of foresters was Rs.358. It is perhaps therefore scarcely necessary to comment upon the fact that in spite of the valuable personal work carried out by Gibson, conservancy qua conservancy failed. The fellings in many parts went on unchecked, contractors paid little or nothing for the timber they took from the forests, and gross abuses and veniality were rife amongst the low-paid subordinate officials. The position which arose will be dealt with in detail in the next period.

Madras Presidency. As has been shown in a previous chapter, the question of forest conservancy, upon which the

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