Abstract
THE Government of India has issued a pamphlet of sixty-five pages, entitled “The Work of the Forest Department of India,” by Mr. R. S. Troup. This gives in popular form, and at the low price of 5i, an account of the forests of India, and of the methods by which they are protected and managed. The Forest Department controls one-fifth of the total area of India, viz. 249,867 square miles; but no fewer than 141,882 square miles of this are so-called “unclassed” forests, where control is nominal, being restricted to the collection of revenue. Of the “reserved “and “protected “forests, 107,985 square miles in area, about one-half, 55,629 square miles, are scientifically managed and subject to sanctioned working plans. The most important commercial forests are the teak forests of Burma, the sal forests of Northern, Central, and North-Eastern India, and the deodar and pine forests of the North-Western Himalaya. Forests yielding inferior kinds of timber are scarcely less important, as they provide wood, fuel, fodder, and other produce for the surrounding agricultural population. The personnel of the Forest Department includes 237 officers trained in England, 231 officers recruited in India and trained at Dehra Dun, and a subordinate service of 1610 rangers, 2000 foresters, and 10,500 forest guards. The Forest Research Institute of Dehra Dun, which was founded in 1906, prosecutes investigations in sylviculture, forest botany, economic products, zoology, and chemistry, and has already issued a considerable output of scientific literature. The pamphlet contains a valuable list, with short descriptions of the forty-four most important forest trees, and an excellent chapter on minor produce, which includes bamboos, grasses, fibres, oil seeds, tanning materials, essential oils, oleo-resins, gums, india-rubber, drugs and spices, and animal products like lac, silk, horns, hides, and ivory. An interesting account is also given of various forest industries which have been established by the Forest Department, such as the tapping of Pinus longifolia for resin and turpentine, which has now passed out of the experimental stage, the annual collection amounting to 2592 tons. The paper-pulp industry, the manufacture of matches, the antiseptic treatment of timber, and the dry distillation of wood are industries which appear to be capable of considerable development in India.
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The Forest Department of India. Nature 100, 35 (1917). https://doi.org/10.1038/100035a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/100035a0