網頁圖片
PDF
ePub 版

CHAPTER XIV

THE INAUGURATION OF THE FOREST RESEARCH INSTITUTE AND

THE PROGRESS IN FOREST RESEARCH WORK, 1906-25

HE small beginnings of research work which had been undertaken by officers of the Department up to the end of the last century have been alluded to in a previous chapter (II, Chap. XX). That so little had been accomplished in this important branch of the activities of a Forest Department must be attributed to the obsession for revenue making, which had animated the various Governments.

In the early days the Department had to justify its existence by at least producing a revenue which would cover the costs of the new administration; but, as has been shown, even in this respect there were instances in which both the Secretary of State and the Government of India had pointed out that it was not possible to expect the Department to pay its way in cases where the management had taken over forests ruined by excessive exploitation before they came under its charge. Even Brandis, when he was given the opportunity of laying down the correct lines of future Forest administration in the Madras Presidency, stated that for a considerable period the Department would be faced with a very heavy expenditure, the price to be paid for the previous delay and neglect in introducing a correct management (vide p. 21 ante). Nevertheless, in its early days the policy enunciated, that the Department should endeavour to at least pay its way, was theoretically sound as it was but repeating the practice which had been followed in Europe after the introduction of a scientific conservancy of the forests. It has been shown that the new Department was greatly assisted in its infancy by the fortunate conjunction of the great expansion in railway construction which synchronized with its first formation. Both harm and good resulted. Fine forests were ruined by ignorant overexploitation, as in the Central Provinces and elsewhere, and extensive areas of private forests disappeared; but, on the

other hand, great untapped forests were opened out and, though unavoidable mistakes were made, the fellings were carried out as systematically as was practicable when the smallness of the staff or the Department and the want of scientific training of its officers are taken into account. To these fortunate circumstances, to the amazingly rapid progress of the people in prosperity under ordered British rule and the almost perfect administration of the Indian Civil Service, to the extension of the area under cultivation and in cattle and flocks, with the consequent increased demand for forest produce, must be attributed the indisputably rapid success with which the new Department made its way and assumed its position as one of the administrative units of the Government. But this very success had its drawbacks. The Department came to be regarded by the Heads of the Civil Administration and by its own Chiefs as a purely commercial concern-its chief raison d'être the production of revenue. Through all the Despatches, Proceedings, Memoranda and Reports written during the last quarter of the past century runs this strong undercurrent-that the Department was primarily maintained for the production of revenue. Brandis himself, as his Reports well show, though his first preoccupation was to produce or endeavour to produce a good balance-sheet, constantly reiterated the necessity of undertaking research work in sylviculture and the economics of the forests. But in his day, although a great deal of energy was expended in the attempt to form plantations at the expense of progress in demarcating the forest boundaries and the necessary sylvicultural attention to the impoverished growing stock, the staff was far too small and inadequately trained to undertake research work. But Brandis laid the foundation of a trained staff and by the end of the century there were few of the old untrained officers left in the Department. Yet the energies of the trained men were absorbed in revenue making. It had come to be regarded as the chief object; the Reviews of the Civil Administration on the Provincial Annual Forest Reports were favourable or otherwise in accordance with the nature of the balance-sheet; and but a small percentage of the officers had ever had an opportunity of putting into practice the elaborate training they had received in their professional work. The Department was stagnating. The scientific training of its officers was not being utilized to the full, the capabilities of the forests were very far from being understood, because they had not been

scientifically studied. For the trained officer, however great his leanings towards the scientific study his charge offered him, was immersed the year round in revenue production; and the progress of the revenue itself with the gradual felling of the old marketable growing stock of the accessible primeval forests was threatened with inevitable stagnation, if not with a serious decrease. In spite of all deterrents there were in the Department, be it said to their credit, some botanists who had achieved a European reputation and there were others on the staff who, as will be shown, were quite ready to take an opportunity offered them of showing that its officers were capable of playing a higher rôle than that of the timber merchant or purely estate agent. But the opportunity for giving scope to, and of making use of, the talent existing had to be made and the man arose to open a new chapter in the history of the Department.

It has been mentioned (II, p. 611) that a temporary appointment of Forest Entomologist was proposed by Ribbentrop and sanctioned by the Government of India in 1900, just before the former's retirement from the Service. The history of this temporary appointment proves to the hilt the prevailing ideas of the Authorities on the objects for which the Department was maintained. The writer took up the appointment of Forest Entomologist at the close of 1900, the late Mr. H. C. Hill, C.I.E., being then Inspector-General. It is impossible to say that Hill was in sympathy with scientific research. Sylviculture in its aspects bearing on Working Plans and revenue were perhaps his chief preoccupations. The entomology of the Indian Forests was practically a closed book, the difficulties of obtaining identification of the commonest of the pests which the briefest study showed might be of importance as a possible source of future danger were great, in the absence of collections in India; added to which it was quickly discovered that many were new to science. These points need not be insisted upon; they will be obvious to the scientific man. Yet before the first year of the appointment was out the writer was told (quite in good faith as he can asseverate) that he must produce published papers or otherwise he would be regarded as wasting his time. The position was one of extraordinary difficulty for a junior officer animated with the conviction that this was a commencement of real research work in the Department by one of its trained officers specially deputed for the purpose, and that his failure to justify the new departure would of necessity convince

the Government that research work in the Forest Department was a waste of money, as their Inspector-General, who had their full confidence as a very fine Forest Administrator, evidently considered it to be. Mr. Hill went home on furlough in April, 1901, and died suddenly in England on the eve of his return. Mr. R. C. Wroughton from Bombay had been appointed to officiate as Inspector-General. Wroughton was a scientific man of some considerable ability. He had studied during his service several branches of zoology and had collected for the Natural History Museum in London and the Bombay Natural History Society, of which he was a strong and valued supporter. But in spite of his predilection for science, Wroughton was unable to obtain the prolongation of the post of Forest Entomologist. It had been made for two years and in face of Hill's openly expressed scepticism as to its value it was to be dropped for the time being. The writer took furlough, but before he had left the country was offered and accepted the officiating post (temporarily vacant) of Superintendent of the Indian Museum, Calcutta. This was early in 1903. Wroughton had proceeded to England on furlough preparatory to retirement, and Eardley Wilmot had been appointed Inspector-General of Forests. In Calcutta on his arrival from Burma he learnt from the writer the position of affairs as regards the post of Forest Entomologist.

A new phase in the history of the Department was to open with Eardley Wilmot's appointment, a phase whose farreaching results can, at the present moment, only be dimly envisaged; but the extraordinary progress achieved in the small period of two decades as the outcome of the steps he now proceeded to take, leave in no doubt the great value of research, employing the term in its widest sense, when intelligently carried out by the trained Forest Expert for the improvement and more efficient administration of a Forest Estate.

Eardley Wilmot laid no claim to be a scientist. That he was a sylviculturist of no mean order in his day the monographs he published on some of the Northern Indian species go to prove (II, p. 604). But if he laid no claim to be a scientist he was a great administrator and a man who had maintained through his years of service the wide vision of the real position which the trained Forest Officer should occupy in a Department. He had for some time been convinced that the inauguration of research work in connection with the Forests of India was an urgent necessity. Holding these views, it is scarcely necessary

to say that one of his first actions as Inspector-General was to review the question of the reappointment of a Forest Entomologist and obtain the Government of India's sanction to the post. This was but a first step in a much wider project.

In 1901 the Viceroy (Lord Curzon) had sanctioned the formation of an Agricultural Research Institute. This Institute came into being at Pusa in Bihar. In so far as this precedent existed Eardley Wilmot was fortunate. But he was equally fortunate in the presence of a great and far-seeing statesman in the person of Lord Curzon, a man to whom no scheme was either too big in its inception or its intricacies too difficult to master. In fact numberless stories were current at the period in which the expert explaining his own work to the Viceroy was puzzled as to the answers to give to some shrewd questions put by the latter.

Eardley Wilmot, after careful discussion of the matter with his senior officers, formulated a scheme under which a Forest Research Institute should be inaugurated at Dehra Dun to which would be attached a staff of specialists working at investigations in different branches of forestry science, the Institute to be under the Government of India and its expenses to be defrayed from the Forest Budget. The most important part of the Inspector-General's proposals, and the one which gave the liveliest satisfaction to the Viceroy and his Council, was Eardley Wilmot's claim that the Institute could be staffed from the Controlling ranks of the Department. That, in other words, he had faith in the scientific training and attainments of his officers and that he was fully confident that he would be able to select men to fill the posts to be made. The Government of India had had to obtain experts from home to fill the research posts at the Agricultural Research Institute at Pusa. Consequently their pleasure at hearing that they had in their own Department in India men who would be able to fill the posts in the new Forest Research Institute may be readily understood.

Acknowledgments must be made to an Inspector-General who was prepared to risk his own reputation and with it the future progress of the Department entrusted to his charge on his opinion of the scientific abilities of its officers, given that they were granted an opportunity for displaying them. That his great faith and his courage in giving it play were justified to a remarkable degree results have shown, and he has the great satisfaction of witnessing the success of his policy.

« 上一頁繼續 »