made clear to a mere spectator of life itself. The manner of doing this has changed. In the past we accepted long soliloquies as part of the convention, but the modern playwright has found that this particular convention, which made for an appearance of unreality, is unnecessary. He obtains the same result by more subtle means and by a more implicit reliance on the art of acting. But the main convention of drama remains. In its higher manifestations it seeks to bare human souls to our sympathy and understanding. Any device which helps towards that result is permissible as part of the illusion of drama, but the dramatis persona of a play must stand out in a relief stronger than life. Their scenic environment should therefore take the same place as the background in a fine portrait. Anything that too closely approaches reality detracts from the importance of the characters. I had an object-lesson in the truth of this theory when witnessing the Warwick Pageant last year. The historical figures had a background of reality-the beautiful grounds of Warwick Castle. The result was not drama, although some of the episodes were dramatic enough. The mood of the day did not fit in with the pageant. The background was separate from the figures, and they were dwarfed to unimportance. I had the same impression in witnessing the scenic splendours of Mr. Beerbohm Tree's Antony and Cleopatra. So much colour and magnificence of detail made Antony and Cleopatra seem accessories rather than principals, and it was a relief to the senses when a comparatively simple scene followed one of the stage pictures. Even with these scenes, however, the characters were not always in artistic proportion. Cæsar's house, for instance, was too vast in its vistas, and the immense columns seemed to dwarf the characters to the measure of reality, which is precisely what is not required in drama. Then, again, no greater artistic mistake was ever made than is comprised in the theory of the union of all the arts. Each appeals to a different sense, and I do not believe that human beings can exercise all their senses at once in an equal degree. That is the fundamental weakness of music-drama. If you are interested in the music the stage action passes as a dream, and the scenery does not exist; if you are impressed by the acting you hardly hear the music; and so on. In spoken drama the chief appeal should be to imagination and sympathy. Nothing should be allowed to interfere with the free play of these mental qualities. If you are not colour-blind, a gorgeous mise-enscène must make an effect on your visual senses and weaken concentration on the character. Indeed, so much is this the case with Mr. Tree's productions that a dramatic critic, to give a true idea of them, must become in part a descriptive reporter. We are made more interested in the environment of Antony and Cleopatra than in what they think and feel, which is the subject-matter of drama. Instead of being privileged to understand the inner life of the great

member of the triumvirate and the passionate Empress of Egypt through the magic of the poet's verse and the art of acting, we see them as if we were only average spectators of life. Possibly an actor and an actress of genius could pierce through this sensuous environment and make our souls vibrate with theirs. A Garrick, it is true, was able to hold his audience with a Macbeth attired in a Hanoverian military uniform, as you may see from Zoffany's picture, but it is not safe to order matters for genius. Besides, the senses might easily accept a Hanoverian uniform without any but a first shock. Mr. Tree, on the other hand, hypnotises or narcotises the imagination by the splendour of his mounting and the brilliance of his costumes.

I am not advocating the shabby 'adequate' scenery of thirdrate Shakespearian productions, but a new kind of mounting in which the environment of the characters would be conceived on the lines of impressionistic suggestion rather than inartistic reality. We do not want the essays in eccentric design which Mr. Gordon Craig gave us some time ago in his production of Handel's Acis and Galatea. He dehumanised drama for the sake of pictorial design. Colour and light should play their part in the creation of atmosphere and mood, but scenery must be nothing but a suggestive background to the characters. The medium of dramatic impression is acting, again acting and always acting, and the mounting of a play should be managed so that it heightens and does not detract from the art of the actor.

E. A. BAUGHAN.

THE FORESTS OF INDIA AND THEIR

ADMINISTRATION

In his Indian Budget Speech on the 20th of July, 1906, Mr. Morley paid a well-deserved compliment to the administration of the vast forests of British India when he announced that:

The State forests of India cover an area of 250,000 square miles, and 66,000,000 cubic feet of timber from the State forests have been extracted, and there has been an increase in the Forest Revenue in five years of more than 600,0007. (cheers). I cannot wonder that those who are concerned in these operations look forward with nothing short of exultation to the day when this country will realise what a splendid asset is now being built up in India in connection with these forests.

This statement is by no means too highly coloured or too eulogistic; but even in India itself many of the administrators in high office have perhaps little idea of the potentialities of future wealth that are treasured in the vast forests covering great tracts unsuitable for permanent and self-sustaining agricultural occupation. Indeed, when the hard time of financial pressure came in 1879 the Government of India very seriously considered the question of abolishing the Forest Department of India, which had been founded as a branch of the revenue administration in 1864; and this, although the Famine Commission of 1878 had urged forest conservancy as an important safeguard for agriculture by pointing out the beneficial effect of forests in retaining soil-moisture, apart from the direct advantages of supplying timber, fuel, bamboos, and other woodland produce. But it was mainly the handsome surplus yielded by the teak forests of Burma, the richest forest province in India, which weighed the balance in favour of a more prudent policy and the retention of the Forest Department, to the present greatly enhanced gain of the Imperial revenues, and to the inestimable advantage of Indian agriculture throughout future generations.

The Department of Revenue, Agriculture, and Commerce, of which the Forest Department was then a branch, was abolished during the financial panic of 1879, but it had to be reconstituted two years later. This was, however, mainly a secretarial rearrangement; whereas the abolition of the Forest Department of India would have

meant an actual loss of ground that it would have been very difficult to recover, and might ultimately have resulted in calamity for Indian agriculture, seeing that further uncontrolled wastage of woodlands, then rapidly proceeding, and comparatively unrestricted clearance for cultivation would have been bound speedily to aggravate the severity and the distress of famines throughout the areas of scanty and precarious rainfall.

This aspect of the question of Indian forest conservancy was not adverted to in Mr. Morley's Budget speech, which naturally only dealt with the present net gain and the still richer golden harvest dimly anticipated in the distant future. And yet the service which Indian forestry indirectly renders to Indian agriculture, as its younger sister and servant, is far more important than any of the direct pecuniary advantages that can be pointed to in the shape of surplus revenue weighing heavy in the treasury, and even forming imposing figures when expressed in the British gold standard.

It would, indeed, be impossible to express in figures or in words, no matter how eloquent in themselves these might both be, the advantages already bestowed on India by following a rational system of forest conservancy. Mere statements of income, expenditure, and net revenue, of total yield and out-turn, of the number of cattle pastured, and the acreage thrown open to grazing, or of similar data of that sort, must fail to represent in anything like true proportions the beneficial work that has already been effected, and for the extension of which in the future there still remains a very wide field. The out-turn from the forests controlled by the Forest Department amounted in 1903 to nearly 246,000,000 cubic feet of timber and fuel, more than 323,000,000 bamboos, and minor produce to the value of over 307,000l.; while the income amounted to over 1,481,000l., the expenditure to 811,000l., and the net revenue to 670,000l. These satisfactory financial results are due to the constant progress being made in organisation and in the utilisation of forest produce; and, as the efforts of the department in both of these directions are being steadily continued, the revenue results in the future are likely far to surpass those yet attained, because, large though the surplus be, it still only represents somewhat less than 31. per square mile of State forest, or 1d. per acre.

These revenue returns, however, take no account of the vast quantities of produce given gratuitously to villagers or extracted under rights of user confirmed in the settlement of reserves. Thus, in 1903, 11,000,000 cubic feet of timber and fuel were extracted under free grants and over 65,000,000 cubic feet under sanctioned rights of user, besides many millions of bamboos, the estimated value of the forest produce given away free or at reduced rates being upwards of 220,000l. The royalties collected on grass and grazing amounted to over 115,000l., but at the same time similar produce to more than

that value was given away free or at reduced rates. And it has always seemed to me that the necessity for and the main justification of having a Forest Department in India is to be found in the assistance it can give to agriculture and to grazing in the most thickly populated tracts fringing the arid zones occurring extensively within the Empire.

If one turn to the census returns of 1901, it is impossible to quote definite details even roughly indicating the national-economic importance of the forests. The number of persons dependent for their means of livelihood on 'wood, cane, and leaves, &c.' is shown as 3,790,492, and 1,886,156 are entered as dependent on taungya or jhum (shifting cultivation); but these 5,676,648 persons, out of the total population of over 294 millions, represent nothing like the actual number either entirely or partially dependent on the woodlands and on forest produce for procuring work and the means of livelihood. It is impossible to determine how many of those classed under other heads are employed on forest work, or in industries dependent on the woodlands for their raw material, such as wood-cutters and sawyers, timber hauling and floating, fuel-cartage, sale of timber and bamboos, charcoal-burning, cutch-boiling, cart- and boat-building, carpentry and joinery, furniture-making, turnery, carving, sandal-making, canework, box-making, brick- and lime-burning, thatching, and many other rural occupations. Some of these employ large numbers of people, as, for instance, thatching, which in Burma alone affords the means of livelihood to over 30,000 persons. The Forest Department of itself provides sustenance for 66,754 souls, of whom 2,440 are the families of forest officers, and 64,314 those of subordinates.

The great importance of forest conservancy, apart from purely commercial considerations, was very clearly pointed out to the Government of India by the expert sent out from England to advise them regarding agriculture in 1892, who urged upon their notice

that:

though immense tracts of country have been denuded in the past, there are still considerable areas which can be taken up and rendered serviceable for climatic ends; and the Forest Department has stepped in none too early in the endeavour to save those wooded tracts which are still left. From climatic considerations alone, the work of the Forest Department is accordingly of importance.1

This advice of an expert in agriculture seems to have at last brought home to the Indian Government the necessity for acting on the recommendations made to them thirteen years previously by the Famine Commissioners of 1878, who stated in their Report of July the 7th, 1880, that:

so far as any immediate advantage is to be sought from the extension of forest n respect to protection against drought, it will, in our opinion, be mainly in

! Voelcker, Report on the Improvement of Indian Agriculture, 1893, p. 31.