to foresco. Who would derive most benefit from a communal forest under the control of a punchayet? It would certainly not be the poorer class of ryots, to whom the cost of a plough is a matter of much greater importance than it is to the richer classes. The influential ryots would doubtless obtain their supplies of timber, fuel, leaves for manure, &c., free, and after their requirements had been met, and perhaps a timber merchant or two supplied with a number of logs at a nominal price, the poorer classes might be allowed to glean anything they could find. Similarly as regards grazing: the influential ryot or cattle breeder would flood the free grazing area with his cattle, to the exclusion of those of the poor ryots who keep only the cattle actually required for the plough. Thus not only would the raison d'être of communal forests be defeated, but in a very short time the forests would cease to exist. It is for the above reasons, among others, that Government has decided. that the control of all its forests should be entrusted to the officers of the Forest Department on whose operations a healthful restraint. will be placed by Collectors. The first step to be taken is to reserve under the Forest Act all Government forests; the chief object of the reserves will be the supply of pasture, small timber, fuel, and leaves for manure for the villagers. So far, so good; it is quite right that Government should ascertain the extent of its forests and the nature of all private rights and easements therein, but it does not appear right to direct that, as the villagers cannot be trusted to manage communal forests for themselves, they shall have no communal forests; and yet this is what Government has done, because it cannot afford to look after the communal forests free of charge. The only concessions granted are, (1) that ryots shall be allowed to remove wood from reserved forests on payment of the seignorage fixed for wood in reserved and unreserved lands, and (2) that the grazing fees for agricultural cattle shall be half the fees for other cattle.

Regarding the first of these concessions it is difficult to reconcile it with the introduction of systematic working, which would at once do away with all question of seignorage, and cutting on permit; and with regard to the second, there will be considerable difficulty in determining which are agricultural cattle in each village. Presumably a census will have to be taken annually, as the cultivated area varies annually and consequently the number of agricultural cattle, calculated at a yoke of bullocks and a cow for every five acres under cultivation, also varies annually. The weak points in the above scheme are, (1) the abolition of communal forests; (2) allowing indefinite concessions in reserved forests. Admitting

that the villagers are incompetent to take care of communal forests themselves, it should nevertheless be possible to introduce the continental system, under which each village or group of villages which for not less than 60 years had enjoyed certain privileges in - adjacent forests had a certain area set apart for its use as communal forest. The area was fixed by calculating the areas required to produce sufficient produce to supply the wants of the commune as it existed sixty years ago, i. e., on the date from which the privilege began to accrue. The management of the thus constituted communal forest was undertaken by the Forest Department, the cost of supervision and management was met by the sale of a portion of the annual produce, and the rest was handed over to the commune for distribution among the inhabitants according to their requirements. The rights of the commune were not allowed to grow as the number of inhabitants increased, for this would have led to the demand becoming greater than the supply, and to Government being asked either to destroy the communal forest or to increase its area, in order to meet the demand. To avoid this the houses in the commune were counted on a certain date, and the right to timber, fuel, &c., was fixed once for all, at so much per house at that time existing. Similarly with the cattle; grazing in the communal forest was limited to the number of cattle existing on a certain date in the commune, and although this settlement took place over forty years ago, and many communes have doubled and trebled in size, the quantity of produce to be supplied from, and the number of cattle to be grazed in, the communal forests remains the same as fixed at the original settlement. But, on the other hand, when the communal forests were first established, many of them contained nothing but wretchedly poor growth, which forty years of care have turned into splendid forest, supplying all the requirements of the communes without exceeding the annual growth, and, therefore, without damage to the forests, and in many cases producing a large surplus of timber, the sale of which supplies the commune with the wherewithal to make streets, build schools, pay schoolmasters, &c., without increasing the local taxes by one cent. Some such scheme should be tried in this Presidency, and probably will be when the staff of the Forest Department has been sufficiently strengthened to enable it to do more systematic work than its overworked officers can at present attempt. Above all things it is necessary that a limit should be fixed to the privileges to be allowed in either communal or reserved forests; for Government cannot be expected to provide privileges for a future. increase of population and cattle, to the detriment of the Govern

ment forests; and as a limit to such privileges will have to be fixed sooner or later, it is to the interest of Government to commence the work as early as possible.-Madras Times.

WOODEN PAVEMENTS FOR ROADS IN INDIA.-Mr. R. A. Robinson, A.M.I.C.E., in a letter to a local contemporary on the cost and maintenance of roads in Burma, advocates the system introduced by the Metropolitan Board of Works in London, i.e., a surface of wood pavement laid on a foundation of cement concrete. He states that a cement foundation of 6 inches in depth will prove substructure for a traffic of 750 tons per square foot per day under wood pavement for 100 years as for 10 years. On the other hand, he states that macadam was proved inefficient for traffic less than half that named. He also asserts that the total cost of laying and maintaining a road with teak wood pavement with suitable substructure would be considerably less than remetalling and keeping up a macadamised road for 7 or 8 years. Opinions, however, differ on this point. The varieties of temperature and climate of Burma will not permit wooden pavements proving so economical and suitable for road construction as it does in colder climates; the excessive heat and damp of the country, which the timber will be subjected to, will soon cause displacement of the blocks, thus rendering the strongest foundation ineffectual under heavy traffic. The middle bed between the rails of the Tramway lines, when first made, was filled in with specially prepared metal laid between two layers of Portland cement, and in a very short time, and under ordinary traffic, the roads were reduced to dust.-Indian Engineering.

ABSENCE OF SEEDLINGS IN SCOTS FIR WOODS.-Although a dense leaf-canopy usually prevents the seed of any species of tree from developing into plants in a thick wood, yet in more open woods it is not uncommon to find a good proportion of seedlings thriving wherever light can reach them. This is especially noticeable in deciduous woods, from which cattle and sheep are excluded, and where ground game is kept down; and although little in the way of natural regeneration is attempted in this country, the spontaneous growth of seedlings is often sufficient to maintain a succession of trees in many woods in the South. But while this would naturally be expected in all indigenous woods, we find that one of our most widely distributed forest trees, the Scots pine, rarely reproduces itself in this way. This appears more remarkable when we consider its enormous seed-producing powers, and

the rapidity with which a piece of moorland adjoining a pine-wood is covered with seedlings. When, however, a thick pine-wood is thinned, the crop of seedlings which might be expected to follow the operation rarely appears, or, rather, the seedlings rarely develop into plants. The seeds germinate freely, so that no proof is wanting as to the quality or quantity of the seed, but they invariably die off a few days after germination takes place. The surface of the ground in thick pine woods consists of a layer of dry needles, and upon removing this top layer, a fungus-infested stra-. tum is reached, formed of partially decomposed needles, twigs, &c. It is this latter layer that the radicle of a seedling first encounters in its downward course, and I have frequently observed that it damps off almost immediately after coming in contact with it. This is only what might be expected when the character of such dry fungoid matter is considered, but the most noteworthy point in connection with it is that the seedlings of other trees appear to be unaffected by it. The larch, for instance, may often be found coming up under the shade of Scots pines in a thin wood, although one would suppose seedlings of that tree were the more susceptible of the two to any objectionable matter. Seedlings of other species may also be found thriving in the decaying matter, although the pine seedlings may be dying off by the hundred in the vicinity. I have noticed, however, that when a pine seed happens to germinate upon an old root, or a rift in the bark near the ground, it will often succeed in existing for several years according to its position, &c. It seems highly probable, therefore, that the presence of some fungus in the decaying matter is the cause of the mortality among the seedlings, for whenever a cleared space in a wood is left untouched for a few years, seedlings invariably make their appearance as soon as the decaying matter is thoroughly decomposed into humus, and the natural vegetation of grass or heather has commenced to grow. The presence of a species of fungus in the decomposing matter, and its absence after decomposition is effected, renders it extremely probable that this saprophyte may be connected with the death of the seedlings.

Whatever the true cause may be, however, I have almost invariably found the mortality most pronounced in those places where the decomposing matter was present in most abundance, and least observable where any agencies effecting its removal had been at work.-A. C. F. in the Gardeners' Chronicle.

EDITOR'S NOTE ON ABOVE.-This is the first time that we have heard fungoid growth in decaying leaves suggested as the cause of failure of seedlings under

conifer forest. Readers of the "Indian Forester " need hardly be told, that regeneration by self-sown seed is always very rare in conifer forest, owing to the strongly fibrous needles decomposing extremely slowly and thus forming not only a sour humus, but also a thick dead mass through which the taproot of the seedlings cannot reach down to the true soil below in time to escape the drought, which immediately follows after the growing season. For this reason it is always the practice on the continent of Europe to get rid of this layer of undecomposed needles in seed coupes either by driving cattle or pig over the area or by raking it into the soil below. The absence of young deodar and Pinus longifolia seedlings in forests of those species which have been protected from grazing and fire for some time is a well-known fact that has sometimes led to rather rash conclusions regarding the general necessity of light grazing, and, in one instance that we know of, even the utility of the deliberate firing of our forests! There is obviously much more in what " A. C. F." says than the mere inability of the taproot of seedlings to get through the undecomposed layer of needles before drought overtakes it; for why has he observed larch and other seedlings to remain unaf fected. We do not, however, believe that the fungus which converts the needles into vegetable mould is directly harmful, as "A. C. F." suspects. It is more probable that in the damp climate of England and Scotland the humus is at first sour, and that the particular acid present is harmful only to the seedlings of the species from the leaves of which it has been formed.

VALUE OF THE CHARCOAL OF DIFFERENT ENGLISH SPECIES.-The manufacture of charcoal forms an important item in the annual routine of a forester's duties. I am not aware, however, if any attempt has ever been made to find out which kind of wood produces the best charcoal for cooking purposes. The usual way in making charcoal is simply to put the wood into the kiln or retort, just as it comes to hand, all sorts being mixed together. There is also considerable difference of opinion amongst foresters on this point, some holding that oak is the best, while others are equally certain that beech is preferable, and so on. With the view of helping to solve this question, I lay before your readers the accompanying table, which has been compiled from the results of experiments conducted here, and which were specially entered upon to test the subject, and carried out with great care in every detail.

The two principal requisites in charcoal as a cooking agent are, first, the time it takes to boil a given quantity of water; and, secondly, how long it will keep that water at the boiling point.

All that is necessary in the carrying out of these experiments is to provide a small charcoal stove and a tin kettle. Being thus furnished, we begin by―

First.-Weighing out a quarter pound of each kind of charcoal. Second.-Measuring off a pint of water into the kettle, then setting it on the stove, and igniting the fire simultaneously.