Abstract
ANYONE who has travelled by railway throughout India must have noticed the disparity reigning in the distribution of the forests in that country. In some parts the railways pass through great and apparently interminable tracts of forest and jungle. In others, of which Bengal forms one of the best of examples, the converse is the case. Between Calcutta and the foot of the Darjeeling Hills the traveller by railway passes over a great plain devoted mainly to the production of rice, the villages mostly in groves of palm trees, but a total absence of forest. The forest part in Bengal represents only 0·07 acre per head of population. Bengal has only 9 per cent of its surface under forest, and a considerable part of the latter is in the Darjeeling Hills and the Sundarbans south of Calcutta.
Article PDF
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
STEBBING, E. Afforestation for Bengal. Nature 162, 424–425 (1948). https://doi.org/10.1038/162424b0
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/162424b0