1 ( 4 )
2 6, The Forest Department in Chittagong have been employed during the
3 year in collecting tolls on forest produco coining down the rivers from the
4 Chittagong hill tracts. But the forest officers appear to have gone beyond
5 the orders of Government, and to have instituted a system of sending people
6 up into the forests with licenses to cut timber and work their will over
7 tracts which the Deputy Commissioner had leased in the Revenue Depart-
8 ment. ‘The two sets of lease-holders therefore clashed; the forest officer
9 with his superior at Calcutta did not seem to be qualified to have the full
10 control over forest transactions on a distant border, more especially when
11 the only forest work to be done was the revenue work and not professional
12 conservancy. Moreover it appeared that the tracts which had been declared
13 to be open Government forests stretched away to the Lushai high lands, where
14 our trops were fighting last season. Accordingly, the Commissioner of the
15 division was vested with the powers of Conservator of Forsests in the Chitta-
16 gong division. Tho forest revenue will not suffer; some real conservancy oper-
17 ations may in course of time be undertaken; and meanwhile the peace of the
18 border will not be endangered.
19 1. Private forests.—The only noteworthy proceedings of the year on
20 private forests were the attempt to carry logs down from the Surunda Rajah’s
21 sil forests, and the beginning made by the Superintendent of the Orissa Tribu-
22 ary Mehals towards a rough kind of forest conservancy in the Gurjhat States.
23 Last year’s review noticed the inspection report on the Surunda sAl forests,
24 and permitted the Assistant Conservator to make an experiment of bringing
25 sl logs down the Brahminee river to Orissa. The present report (paragraph 17)
26 mentions that the experiment was to be made with fifty logs. Subsequent
27 accounts have shown that the forest officer found that he gould not hope to
28 get fifty logs to the river, so he began his experiment with filteen logs out of
29 the fifty he had cut. Out of the fifteen logs started, ten were lost in the rapids ;
30 after some weeks work, occasional porterages, and considerable expenditure, five
31 logs were got down almost to the plains; the forest officer and his men got
32 more or less fever; and the result was to leave great doubt whether, in the
33 present state of the river and the country, the Surunda s&l forests could be
34 worked to any advantage.
35 The Superintendent of the Orissa Tributary States issued simple conser-
36 vancy instructions to the several chiefs, and in time the waste of timber will
37 perhaps be somewhat checked.
38 From the great tracts of the Chota Nagpore division, covered with stunted
39 sil, a good deal of small timber is brought to market, as the Lieutenant-Governor
40 observed, at Hazareebaugh; but it seems doubtful if any large timber is available
41 at a remunerative cost, and whether time would make the small timber large.
42 8. Plantations.—The present report does not give a very favorable account
43 of plantation work, which seems to have received hitherto but seanty atten-
44 tion. It seems quite incomprehensible how a Government forest plantation
45 of forty-two acres, established in 1866, should have been forgotten or lost for
46 several years, and should have been ‘discovered this season” (paragraph 39 of
47 the report), when its trees were found to average 114 feet high. All its trees
48 seem to be foreign trees, raised from Amcrican or European seed. It is clear
49 that no record has been kept of the Bengal plantations, or there could not be a
50 doubt (see paragraph 44 of the report) whether the teak trees of the only good
51 plantation we have were raised from transplanted seedlings, or from seedlings
52 raised where the sced was planted. ‘The Lieutenant-Governor hopes that for
53 the future all Bengal officers, engaged in, or connected with, plantation works
54 will study and follow the practice and suggestions set forth in the interesting
55 papers recently circulated regarding Punjab plantations.
56 The Lieutenant-Governor visited the Rungbool and the Bamunpokree
57 plantations. He is disposed to agrce with Dr. G, King that it was a
58 mistake to clear the Rungbool hill near Darjeeling of a fine natural forest
59 the logs of which now rot on the ground, and then to plant and renew
60 annually stunted and unhealthy seedlings collected in the forests. The