rains in the United Provinces and elsewhere, the showers known as the Mango showers, and the local rainfall in Assam. These are often of very considerable local importance.

Omitting the part of the country in the south which is subject to two monsoons, the cold weather season commences in October or November (the former in the northern provinces) and lasts till the end of February or end of March respectively. This cold season is followed by the hot weather commencing in early March (or early April, the latter in the north) and lasting till the monsoon breaks in early June or July. It is during the hot season that the forests suffer so severely from fires; though the modern fire conservancy arrangements introduced by the Forest Department have done much to mitigate this evil. This season is, however, a somewhat trying one for the Forest Officer.

To complete these brief preliminary remarks a glance must be taken at the geology of this remarkable continent. It is in itself a fascinating study. To Oldham, of the Geological Survey of India, in his Evolution of Indian Geography (Vol. III, R.G.S.), we are indebted for an extremely able account of India's geological origin. It reads like a romance, whilst at the same time affording the Forester data which enable him to understand several important factors relative to tree distribution.

"Measured by the vast ages of geological existence, the peninsular area of India (the region of southern tableland) is by far the oldest. On the north-western borders of this area, stretching across the plains of Rajputana, are the remnants of a very ancient range of mountains called the Aravalli. To the south of these mountains the peninsula of India, as we know it now, has been a land area since the close of the paleozoic era. Across the extra peninsula regions to the northwest of the Aravalli Hills the sea has repeatedly flowed even to the commencement of tertiary ages; and between the two regions thus separated by the Aravallis there exists most striking differences both in structure and in conformation. The present shape of the peninsula-itself but a remnant of a far more widely extended continent-has only been assumed since the occurrence of the vast series of earth movements which resulted in the creation of the region of depression-the alluvial basins of the Indus and of the Ganges. Over the substratum of granite and gneiss which forms the bedrock of peninsular geologic structure, and eastward from the Aravallis, stretch the wide red sandstone deposits which are

known as the Vindhyan system, and which (even when buried beneath the Deccan trap) preserve a generally horizontal position. Geologists maintain that these widespread unfossiliferous beds are but the detritus washed down from the peaks and valleys of the inconceivably ancient mountain range which is now represented by the comparatively low and degraded Aravallis. Almost coeval with the Aravallis (and possibly at one period connected with them) is the much broken and ragged formation known as the 'Eastern Ghats,' overlooking the Bay of Bengal. So ancient is this eastern buttress of the peninsular tableland that since the close of the paleozoic era the waters of the bay have never washed westward, and the coast of Madras was the eastern coast-line of that pre-Indian continent of which India is now the muchdiminished representative. But whilst the Aravallis were clearly the north-western limit of this prehistoric continent, it is not quite so clear what formed the boundary on the northeast. There was no Gangetic basin in those days, and it was probable that the Rajmahal Hills and the hills of Assam continued the land area to the Himalaya east of Sikkim ; for it is certain that the Eastern Himalaya are vastly older than the western, and that the Burmese mountains are comparatively young. Next followed a long period of repose and of the silent process of alluvial deposit by river action, during which the wide central beds called Gondwana were formed. Here we must note the existence of ice-worn boulders and the evidence of former glaciers in Rajputana; and at this point we are faced with the almost indisputable fact that the India of the Aravallis and of the Rajmahal Hills was but an extension from South Africa. The evidence which has been collected to prove this ancient connection seems to be conclusive. Plants of Indian and African coal measures are identical, and not only plants, but the fauna of that period claim a similar affinity. Near the coast of South Africa a series of beds occur which is similar in all respects to an existing Rajmahal series; whilst the distribution of marine fossils proves that to the north-west and to the south-east respectively of a land barrier, which must have included the Maldives, Laccadives and Madagascar, were two distinct seas. This land connection must have existed at the commencement of cretaceous times. There are no marine sedimentary beds in the Eastern Himalaya analogous to those of Burma, of the North-West Himalaya and of the mountains west of the

Indus. These wide highlands, together with the great plateau of Tibet, were then under sea, subject (so far as we can tell) to no great earth movements in very early ages, but undergoing quiet and placid intervals of subsidence and upheaval, of alternate existence as open lacustrine land surface or sea bottom. At the close of the jurassic period not only were the North-Western Himalaya non-existent, but the very rocks of which the ranges to the west of the Indus are formed were still uncreated. Only the Aravalli peaks stood lonely and silent, overlooking a vast north-western sea. Not till the close of the cretaceous period was India shaken by a series of eruptive cataclysms into something of its present shape. A succession of volcanic eruptions, exceeding in force and grandeur anything that the world has ever seen (except, indeed, it be in South America), covered 200,000 square miles of India with lava and tuffs to a depth of thousands of feet. India must have been for a time one vast volcanic furnace. This was but the prelude to the mountain building. Then, at the commencement of the tertiary period, set in that long succession of earth movements which, culminating in intensity about the pliocene period, are still in perceptible activity. The sea was driven back; rocks were crushed and forced upwards until marine limestones were upheaved to 20,000 feet above sea-level. Then were the sea-formed rocks of the trans-Indus hills ranged and folded and set in order. It was the period of the creation of our Indian frontier.

"Geologists have decided that the fossils of Burma and of the western frontier alike place the formation of these regions in the eocene, or latter part of the tertiary era. But the great bulk of the North-Western Himalaya must have been a formidable mountain barrier in times previous to the eocene period, and, moreover, even in those early times, the river systems of the Himalaya must have been traced very much as they are at present. At the foot of the Himalaya there existed for geologic ages a long series of river deposits which have been compressed and upheaved in very recent times to form what is known as the Siwalik Range, an entirely subsidiary and secondary range of hills which flanks the Himalaya on its southern face, forming an elevated longitudinal valley, in which Dehra Dun is situated, between itself and the foothills of the main system. In the neighbourhood of those rivers which issue from Himalayan valleys and cross the elevated valley and the bordering Siwalik Hills there have

been found beds of conglomerate which prove by their com-
position that rivers large and rapid, having their sources in
the Himalaya or beyond, must have passed that way from
time immemorial very near to their present channels; and
the evidence of the rocks connects the origin of these rivers
with the pliocene period. Thus it seems probable that the
North-West Himalaya existed as mountains of very con-
siderable altitude in pliocene times. Another result of this
succession of earth movements was the formation of that
great Indo-Gangetic depression which forms one of the
natural geographical divisions of India. The break in the
connection between the Rajmahal and the Assam Hills which
gave an opening for the eastward flow of the Ganges is com-
paratively recent. Originally the whole southern flank of
the Himalayan system was drained by the Indus, and the
diversion of the Jumna eastward into the Gangetic basin
may be almost historic. Probably there was an interval,
during which the Jumna either joined the Indus, or found
a way south-west through some of the dry river channels
still existing across the Rajputana desert.
The present
division of the two drainage systems, or water parting, is
now marked in the Himalaya by a ridge on which stands the
church at Simla. It is further probable that the same earth
movements caused the submergence which separated India
from Africa. By the end of the eocene period the west coast
of India was formed, and the only existing evidence of that
old-world connection is now to be seen in the islands of the
Laccadive and Maldive groups. The Western Ghats, facing
the Arabian Sea, are of quite recent formation, exhibiting
some of the hydrographic phenomena which are common to
mountains belonging to similar periods, with rivers cutting
their way back from narrow and steep-sided valleys, and still
changing their features from day to day. From the Western
Ghats all the peninsular rivers of India run eastwards, with
the exception of the Narbada and Tapti. From the edge of
the Tapti basin to the extreme south, the Western Ghats
form the main water parting of the Indian continent."

CHAPTER II

THE EARLY HISTORY OF INDIA AND ITS INFLUENCE ON THE

T

FORESTS

HE early history of the Forests of India is closely bound up with the history of the ancient inhabitants, as has been the case in many other parts of the world. For with the increase in population the activities of man have, so far as the forests of the world are concerned, been a history of devastation, carried on throughout the ages down to present times.

There seem to be few reasons for doubting that in the recent post-tertiary period, even within historic times, the greater part of the country now comprising our Eastern Empire was covered with more or less dense forests populated by aboriginal tribes. The existing remnants of former forest growth, to be alluded to in greater detail in an ensuing chapter, and physical reasons, tend to show that this contention can be put forward with some certainty. But historical indications of the former great forest wealth of the country are also extant. A brief exposition of the ancient history of man in India is a necessary preliminary, therefore, to a consideration of the forest history of the country.

The geographical position of India shut off to the north and north-east by a giant mountain wall and surrounded on the other sides by sea has inevitably shaped both the history and destinies of its inhabitants. Holdich describes India as a geographical cul-de-sac, possessing a soil particularly favourable to the increase of mankind. From time immemorial India has been peopled by immigrants who have multiplied with so great a vitality that none of the recent waves of conquest sweeping through her few gateways on the northwest have made any permanent impression, save to add another item to her bewildering ethnography. The northwestern barrier mountains have been already alluded to. They have proved of immense importance in the past in