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from a certain date, and specify definitely the limits and boundary marks. The forest is then demarcated by the Forest Department, with numbered cairns, posts, boundary boards, and blaze marks on tree-stems; and, in the case of forests containing much valuable timber, fellings remain in abeyance until a working-plan has been drawn up, and has been formally approved by the local Government. Within five years the local Government may rescind or modify any order made regarding the settlement and reservation; but, after that, the special sanction of the Government of India is necessary to any further alterations that may be proposed.

The formation of scientific working-plans for the various reserved forests was commenced in 1884, and up till now they have been prepared and approved for areas aggregating 36,000 square miles. But as their preparation necessitates an expensive survey, usually on the scale of four inches to the mile, and the employment of a special working-plans officer, with a large staff of enumerators, such further special schemes of management are, on account of their expense, only likely to be formed for reserves containing important supplies of marketable timber. In such cases, however, they are framed under due safeguard against rash felling or overworking in any manner.

While operations are in progress the working-plans officer specially deputed to the duty submits to the Conservator draft proposals indicating the lines he thinks should be followed, and which he has previously discussed fully with the Conservator. These proposals are then forwarded by the Conservator, with such remarks as he thinks necessary, to the Inspector-General, who returns them with his approval or with appropriate suggestions. On the field-work being completed and the scheme drawn up and printed, it is submitted by the Conservator to the local Government, and by them forwarded to the Inspector-General for his opinion; and the latter has then the opportunity either of expressing his approval or else of pointing out technical objections, in case the Conservator has not accepted any previous suggestions which may perhaps have been offered concerning the draft proposals. Should there be difference of opinion on technical points between the Conservator and the Inspector-General, the matter has to be threshed out in the way of explanations, until the local Government finds itself in a position to approve and accord final sanction to the working-plan, which is then brought into force for the next thirty years, with the certainty that during this period the various annual falls to be made are well within the possibility' of the forest, and are not an encroachment on the capital in timber, or beyond the annual increment accruing within the forest.

With regard to the teak forests in Burma, the most valuable in the Empire from a revenue point of view, it has been found in the course of such investigations that it takes from about 150 years in the comparatively moist zone to 180 years in the rather dry zone of

the deciduous forests for a tree to attain good marketable dimensions. These periods have accordingly been accepted as the normal time for one complete rotation of teak, from seedling to maturity, and these two life-cycles or generations are respectively divided into five and six periods of thirty years each, so that the annual falls to be made, say, from 1890 to 1920, are numerically laid down, both as to locality and extent, for each year till 1920, when a revised allotment will have to be made for the following thirty years.

While such schemes of management secure continuity in the extraction of timber for revenue purposes, they also prescribe the various measures that are to be carried out, so far as the available establishment and as funds permit, in order to improve the proportion, the quality, and the rate of growth of the more valuable timber-trees. Such cultural measures consist mainly of sowing and planting, and felling or girdling the less valuable kinds of trees interfering with the growth of teak, sál, deodar, &c.; and the success of these is dependent on protection being secured against fire, owing to the increased amount of inflammable matter thus collected inside the areas operated over.

Fire-protection is provided for by prescriptions laid down in the Forest Acts and Rules; but special measures have also to be taken, which are extended to about 40,000 square miles. These measures consist chiefly in clearing and maintaining fire-traces,' which are broad paths kept as free as possible from inflammable débris during the hot season, and in employing watchers to check fires coming from the outside, and to prevent the entrance of persons who might cause fire either wilfully or through negligence. As is also the case in European countries, fires which break out inside forests are usually caused by ill-disposed persons or for purposes of personal advantage; and throughout India the most common cause of incendiarism is to provide for the early growth of succulent grass, or for some similar object. But fire-protection is on the whole decidedly successful, failures usually amounting only to about 5 per cent. of the total area attempted to be protected. The difficulty of effective supervision during the hottest and driest time of the year, the scarcity of labour, the indifference or hostility of the rural population, and the carelessness and inefficiency of the lower subordinate staff, all combine to make this work one of the most trying duties of the divisional forest officer; and when to these are added an unusually prolonged dry season, with strong winds blowing from burned areas outside, his labour is apt to be in vain.

Although undoubtedly of great direct advantage in promoting the growth of sál in Northern India, and of both súl and teak in Central India-that is to say, in some of the drier forest areas-fire-protection in some of the moister zones, as in Burma and Assam, and along the foot of the Himalayas, has been found to favour the increase and growth of the less valuable trees at the expense of the more valuable

kinds. These have therefore to be increased numerically by means of sowing and planting, and by felling or girdling trees of less or no value. The area over which such improvement-fellings' have been hitherto made cannot be stated; but plantations have been formed to the extent of about 135,000 acres, more than one-half of which are teak plantations made in Burma, chiefly with the aid of the Karen hilltribesmen and by utilising for this purpose the taungya-clearances made for shifting cultivation under the directions of the divisional forest officers. Originally it was hard to get the Karens to fall in with the proposals of the Forest Department, but now they would think it a great hardship if deprived of this additional source of livelihood. At present, planting work is mainly confined to Burma and Bombay, where about 5,000 and 3,300 acres respectively are being added annually. There is therefore every likelihood that the future yield from such forests will be considerably larger than it now is, so that the requirements of unborn generations are by no means being lost sight of, or being left unprovided for.

Like the distribution and the character of the forests themselves, the life of the forest officer, viewed as a career, varies greatly; but it is ever full of interest to one having a taste for natural science and biology. Happy should he be, however, whose lot falls in the alpine and sub-alpine tracts of the Himalayas ; but full of hardship it usually is to those who have to bear the heavy burden of hard work in the trying climate of the purely tropical provinces, often with a very moist, enervating, and malarious climate. There is far more work now to be done than in the olden days of about forty years ago, when Captain Forsyth wrote his fascinating work, The Highlands of Central India; and big-game shooting seldom comes within easy reach of an energetic forester of the modern school.

There still remains, it is true, the wild charm of tent-life in the woodlands, and the pleasure of cold, sharp evenings beside the bright and cheerful camp fire; but there are also many and great hardships that have to be endured in weary solitude during the scorching heat of the blazing tropical spring and the merciless summer. Sometimes, when one is forced to be walking during the hottest time of the day, as when inspecting fire-protection paths along which one may not be able to ride, the pulse goes up to 120 beats a minute, the intense heat and glare make one feel faint, giddy, and sick, and the tongue seems almost to stick to the roof of the mouth; but one must either do the work conscientiously or else shirk it ignobly, for there is no middle way. Sometimes, too, in the height of the hot weather, there is a great want of water; and one may even be forced to camp near buffalo wallows, where, by sinking little side-wells at a short distance from the muddy pool, one can barely scoop out sufficient fluid for camp cookery; and even such water, when boiled, filtered, then boiled VOL. LXI-No. 360

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again, and used for making tea, may still be strongly tainted with the unpleasant odour of buffalo.

But, all the same, despite hardships, malaria, rather poor pay, and very inadequate pensions, the Indian Forest Service has never yet failed to attract to it men who have given of their best in the shape of hard and laborious work; and Mr. Morley's eulogy in his Budget speech epitomises the present result of these past efforts. The pay and the pension given to forest officers should, however, in common fairness, be identical with those given to the Public Works Department, that other branch of the administration to which the Indian Forest Service has most resemblance, and with which it can claim closest kinship. I would earnestly commend this suggestion to the Secretary of State's sense of justice, for the now long-deferred and long-expected improvement in both of these respects will only be consistent with the eloquent tribute he has paid to the work of the Forest Department.

J. NISBET.

'THE DECAY OF MANNERS'

THE famous talons rouges, which trod so firmly the steps of the guillotine, had danced in many a gavotte or minuet in the ballrooms of the Louvre or of Versailles; the snowy lace, which fell over hands white as any woman's, had often been turned back to give free play to a wrist firm as iron, and the white hands had saved their owner's life in many a hard-fought duel.

There was not a trace of effeminacy in those men; they went to their death smiling, as they had smiled so often at a jest in their Sovereign's drawing-rooms; if their attire were less brilliant than they could have wished, it was because their gaolers had torn their gold-embroidered coats from off their backs, and the proudest heads in France were held as erect as ever, though no longer covered by the hats with the sweeping feathers which had been doffed with such grace, in bows of such elegance, as no other genera

tion has ever seen.

In that impressive moment of their lives, less than ever must there be the slightest lapse from the rigid etiquette of manners; though it be the last time that the snuffbox will be offered to anyone, there must be the same studied grace in the offering. The delicate flick from the handkerchief must not be forgotten, though the cambric shirt from which the grain of snuff is brushed will so soon be dyed crimson in the life-blood of its owner. As they had lived, so they died, perhaps the most perfect gentlemen the world has ever seen. Of them it might be said, not ' Manners makyth man,' but 'Manners were these men'; their manners were not something external assumed for the occasion and dropped, they were the expression of their inward refined selves; they are gone, and with them has been buried the secret of manners in their most perfect form. It is doubtful if any but a Latin or a Celtic race could ever have brought manners to such a high state of perfection. True, at one time Great Britain claimed to be the home of the first gentleman in Europe,' but we have no evidence that the rest of Europe admitted that claim, and it may have originated in our British belief that we can produce the best of everything, even of

manners.

It was

something to boast of to be the 'first gentleman in Europe,'

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