the river are those principally dwelt upon in this Despatch, although allusion is made to the wants of the population of the city and district of Lahore. I trust I need hardly remind your Excellency in Council that although every facility should be given to the railway and steamers, they can have no exclusive right to any supplies from the Forest Department, and that the market must be considered equally open to the rest of the community of the Province as to them, and provision for their wants must be as much considered.

It must be remembered that a similar increase of demand is arising all over India, and that the difficulty of adequate supply is especially felt in the neighbouring Province of Sind. I acknowledge, with much satisfaction, the exertions that have been made of late years throughout Her Majesty's Indian territories, but the utmost care, watchfulness and exertions, on the part of the Forest and Revenue Officers, will still be necessary to prevent a very serious deficiency.

I feel no doubt that Your Excellency in Council, and the Governors and Lieutenant-Governors of the other presidencies and provinces of India, will give those officers the utmost possible support in the performance of their duty of dealing out and husbanding the resources of the present forests, and of forming new reserves, and will give them the means of making their establishments efficient for that purpose.

This will be the more necessary, as you will learn from Sir Charles Wood's Despatch of the 12th instant, No. 10, in the Railway Department, that he has not been able to accede to your proposal for allowing the investment of the guaranteed capital of the railway company, in forming the plantations proposed by you. One of the sources of supply on which you depended is therefore cut off, and, as there is no doubt as to the demand continuing, it will be necessary that your Government should make greater exertions to provide the means of meeting it. I need scarcely add that I shall gladly sanction any wellconsidered outlay, with the object of increasing the means, either by working the forests now existing, or by forming new plantations, of enabling the Forest Department of India to meet the demands for timber and fuel which the wants of the population, and of the railway and steamboat companies, are certain to make on them."

Towards the end of the period herein considered a considerable correspondence on the subject of the require

ments in sleepers and fuel by the railways already built, those under construction and those projected to be built in the Punjab, North-West Provinces and Sind was forwarded to the Secretary of State by the Government of India. These construction works and the consumption of fuel which would be required when the railways were in running order demanded, and would demand, a very large quantity of timber and fuel, and Brandis had been engaged in conjunction with the Railway Authorities and the Forest Officers of the three provinces in discussing the available sources of supply and the best methods of extracting it from the forests. It became at once apparent that the Forest Staffs of the three provinces would require considerable strengthening, and also that in some of the forests, it was thought in Sind possibly, it would be necessary to anticipate fellings and cut ahead of the possibility. To enable this to be done with safety Brandis was desirous of having trained men available for the purpose, and one of the first steps taken was to transfer Schlich from Burma to Sind. In addition six out of the seven trained officers who had recently arrived in India were posted to Sind, the Punjab and the North-West Provinces.

The new line to be constructed was the Indus Valley Railway between Multan and Sukkur, a distance of nearly 300 miles. At the rate of 2000 sleepers per mile this would require 600,000 sleepers 10 feet by 10 inches by 5 inches (or 3 cubic feet apiece), being upwards of 2,000,000 cubic feet. The locomotives would use wood fuel. At the rate of one train daily either way and at I maund per train-mile an annual supply of 219,000 maunds would be demanded. In addition a large supply of fuel for brick-burning would be required. The sleepers would have to come mainly from the Sind Forests. The fuel from the tamarisk (Tamarix dioica) and jhand (Prosopis spicigera) Forests of Sind and the Punjab.

The other new line was the Northern State Railway from Lahore to Jhelum. It was estimated that 2,200,000 sleepers would be required for its construction. It was necessary that these sleepers should be delivered on the three rivers Ravi, Chenab and Jhelum. It was hoped to be able to make use of the pines, silver fir and spruce to supplement the deodar supplies for this work and orders were issued to fell 5000 of the former species on the Chenab and 1000 trees on the Jhelum.

With a view to increasing the supplies of timber for these two railways the Government of India authorised the Punjab

Government to enter into engagements with several railway timber merchants in the Punjab, who were engaged in working the forests of Kashmir, under the permission of His Highness the Maharajah, to purchase from them annually a large quantity of deodar timber at fixed rates. It was hoped by the Government of India that " these arrangements will enable us to provide for a large portion of the timber requirements of the Indus Valley line."

The numerous papers bearing upon this urgent matter are most interesting reading, and show clearly the extraordinary demands which were thus necessarily made upon the new and but partly organised Forest Department. That it should have been able to rise to and grapple successfully with an unexampled position, as it undoubtedly did, affords perhaps the greatest testimony to the great administrative gifts possessed by Brandis and to the energy and ability shown by his staff. That the work was intricate and dangerous is obvious by the admitted necessity of having to anticipate the fellings in certain regions, and this in the absence of an adequate knowledge of the contents of the forests. So far as could be done Brandis' arrangements guarded against this dangera danger which, outside the Government of India and the Secretary of State, was but dimly apprehended or understood by the officers of the Local Governments and Administrations. This matter is dealt with at greater length in the following chapters on the North-West Provinces.

CHAPTER VIII

THE INTRODUCTION OF FOREST CONSERVANCY INTO THE

I

NORTH-WEST PROVINCES AND OUDH, 1865-70

T has been already shown that in 1865 Forest Conservancy in the North-West Provinces (now called the United Provinces) was in the hands of the Commissioners of Divisions, who had been appointed ex officio Conservators. It is not apparent from the records how this departure, which had not been made elsewhere in India, came about. It may have been at the instigation of Colonel Ramsay, Commissioner of Kumaun, who it was well known had taken an interest in the forests of his charge and wished to keep them in his own hands. It is on record, however, that in 1864 the Government of India had applied to the Secretary of State for sanction to the appointment of Dr. Jameson as “ Inspector of Forests in the North-West Provinces as a temporary and provisional arrangement, pending the more complete organisation of the Forest Department. The Secretary of State (then Sir Charles Wood, who during his tenure of office showed such keen interest in the organisation of the Forest Department in India and the preservation of the forests) accorded his sanction to the appointment; but it was never made. The omission to bring the Provinces into line with other parts of India undoubtedly put back Forest Conservancy in them at the period.

In the previous volume (Ch. XXVI) a description has been given of the activities of Webber (the Forest Surveyor) in exploring the hill forests in Kumaun and Garhwal. He subsequently descended to the sâl forests of the submontane hills and carried out his investigations and surveys in the sâl forests there and in the Bhabar.

The Forest Surveyor commenced his explorations from Huldwani, so well known to later generations of Forest Officers in the North-West Provinces. Huldwani he describes as an oasis in the dry Bhabar. There is no water in the Bhabar. On leaving the hills all the rivers flow underground beneath the stony river-beds, only coming to the surface again on reaching

the Terai region to the south. During the monsoon months only, the river beds in the Bhabar are occupied by a turbulent flood of rushing waters. Huldwani was the head-quarters of a canal system which had been constructed by the Government. These canals carried the water from the hills, by means of which great tracts of the Bhabar were reclaimed from the forest by irrigation. This work had been undertaken under the direction of Colonel Ramsay, and there were at the period hundreds of acres of cultivation, settled by thriving and industrious Kumaonis. The great belt of sâl forest stretched from here in an easterly direction by south for a 1000 miles, with few intervals. Some of the forests of the region administered by the Commissioner had already benefited to some extent by the measures of working and protection he had introduced. Webber notices that in parts areas "contained trees 40 feet high and growing healthily. There were immense numbers of fine saplings 20 feet high and in time there will be sâl-timber galore.'

Webber describes the forest types of this region, with the large savannah areas of tall grass, which are now well known, and states that the natives who grazed cattle in the forests took care to burn all the long grass, in order to get up young green grass as soon as rain fell, the fire spreading from thence into the forests. He does not appear, at this period in his forestry career, to have appreciated the damage done by fires in the forests, of which he had had little experience, but he admits "that in reserved forests it is advisable to exclude fires, in order to give seedlings a good start ❞—a somewhat lukewarm assent to the crying need that adequate fire protection should be introduced into the country if the forests were to be saved from inevitable destruction. From his remarks on sport it is apparent that at the period game of all kinds, including tiger, abounded in the forests. Several herds of elephants were also in existence in the region. But they were not now allowed to be shot, "being too valuable and scarce. They used to be captured by the Government Kheda Department, but are now allowed to roam in peace." Describing the great road which ran from Bareilly to Huldwani, Webber says it had been cut through the forest "running perfectly straight in both directions to the horizon. The trees had been felled well back from the great wide road, so as to afford no covert for wild animals too near its course." He notes the remarkable change in scenery which takes place on reaching the foot-hills of the