it is proposed the Working Plan shall take was submitted in April, 1893. The Government of India, when reviewing the Conservator's Report for the year, drew attention to the high expenditure incurred on this plan and to the fact that the high cost of the plans prepared in previous years had been decidedly out of proportion to the results achieved. There are good grounds for this assertion, since the few Working Plans already sanctioned in the Province have been costly failures. Money and time have been wasted in unnecessary elaboration, particularly on the detailed enumeration surveys, which have been made with a view of securing that the forests should not be overworked. But . . . overworking was not likely, under any circumstances, to take place in the localities considered; and, in fact, some of the forests for which costly plans have been drawn up, have proved unworkable, for the present at least." The Goalpara Plan was completed in 1893-4 and sanctioned in the following year. Deviations from its provisions had already taken place. It was at this time the only plan in the Province.

In 1896-7, of the total area of 3682 square miles of Reserves 533 square miles only were under Working Plans. Of this area 522 square miles were in Goalpara, where hitherto it had not been found possible to work out the number of trees prescribed under the plan. The only new work of the year was the preparation of a scheme, auxiliary to the Goalpara Plan, to regulate the removal of trees other than sâl. This scheme subsequently received sanction. In 1899-1900 the total area of forest under the Department was 20,061 square miles, comprising 3609 square miles of Reserves and 16,452 square miles of Unclassed Forest, or 44.2 per cent of the total area of the Province. Of this area 533 square miles of Reserves were under Working Plans at the close of the century. Of the remaining 19,528 square miles the 16,452 square miles of Unclassed Forest did not require Working Plans.

PART II

AND

THE GENERAL PROGRESS OF FOREST CONSERVANCY AND THE INAUGURATION OF FOREST RESEARCH WORK IN INDIA BURMA, 1901-25. THE EFFECTS OF THE GREAT WAR AND OF THE CONSTITUTIONAL REFORMS ON FOREST POLICY

CHAPTER XI

A BRIEF HISTORICAL REVIEW OF ADMINISTRATION IN ONE OF THE MOST IMPORTANT PERIODS IN THE HISTORY OF INDIA, 1901-25

T

HE period dealt with in this chapter is covered by the Vice-Royalties of Lord Curzon, Lord Minto, Lord Hardinge of Penshurst, Lord Chelmsford and Lord Reading. Lord Curzon had succeeded Lord Elgin as Viceroy and Governor-General early in 1899 and was the youngest of the Governors-General with the exception of Lord Dalhousie. Lord Curzon had travelled widely in the East, being an acknowledged expert on Eastern affairs, and had also been Under Secretary at both the India and Foreign Offices. Next to Lord Dufferin, therefore, he took up the office with a much greater experience than many of his predecessors. During his tenure Lord Curzon carried out Cer innumerable administrative reforms which had the effect of sweeping away a great many ancient shibboleths which had served as clogs on the administration for far too long. And in every case the changes were made after the Viceroy had satisfied himself by a personal study of the administrative methods of the particular measure or department concerned that improvements were both needed and possible. The great energy and the powerful brain which he brought to the task are well known to all who served in India during his administration. A consideration as to whether Lord Curzon went too fast in his changes lies without the province of the present work. That Departments were in some cases moving too slow is certain and the Forest Department in one respect that of research-is a case in point. To Lord Curzon's wide administrative outlook and to that of the InspectorGeneral of Forests of the time, Sir S. Eardley Wilmot, the Department owes its start in this important direction, a start which has, in some degree, almost revolutionized its whole outlook.

1899 faune

In chronological sequence the first of the events occurring within the period having a bearing on forestry administration was the great famine of 1899-1900, a disaster all the more formidable since it followed so soon after that of 1896-7, the latter believed to be the worst ever experienced in India. Lord Curzon and his officers in the afflicted Provinces exhibited great energy in relieving the distress, but it was considered open to doubt whether too great a lavishness in expenditure had not been shown in the Central Provinces. A Famine Commission, under the presidency of Sir Antony (later Lord) MacDonnell was set up and issued its Report in 1901. A curious oversight in this Report was that it contained no reference to the great assistance the forests of the country were capable of affording to the people and their flocks on such occasions; and this, in spite of the fact that the value of the forests was far better understood in 1901 than in 1880, when an allusion to the forests in the Report of Lord Lytton's first Famine Commission was made (II, p. 459).

A notable event of the period was the Tibet Mission or Expedition, 1903-4, under Sir Francis Younghusband, the great explorer, who at the age of twenty-four, whilst yet a subaltern of the King's Dragoon Guards, was the first white man to cross the Mustagh Pass in his great journey from Pekin to Kashmir and India in 1887. The Mission eventually went to Lhasa, thus temporarily occupying this previously impenetrable capital for the first time. Whether the political objects gained were not thrown away by subsequent orders from the Home Government need not be entered into here. But it seems not impossible that benefit may ultimately be carried to the great forest tracts at the lower levels which are now better known as a consequence of the expedition. The more recent Everest Expeditions have also proved useful in this respect.

A more important step in its effects on Forest Administration was the formation of the North-Western Frontier Province. The main object was to facilitate the management of the tribal frontier until then under the Punjab Government. Lord Curzon adopted with modifications Lord Lytton's idea and created in 1901 the North-Western Frontier Province under a Chief Commissioner with headquarters at Peshawar. All the territories to the west of the Indus, with the exception of the Dera Ghazi Khan District, and also the Hazara District, were included in the new Province. To prevent confusion the old North-West Provinces were renamed the Agra Province and