REVENUE AND EXPENDITURE OF THE FORESTS.

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of timber, making fagots, repairing roads, footpaths, &c., cost 5817.; maintaining pasture-land and making hay, 4377.; the night-watching and rearing of game cost 847.; and to collect acorns for the deer incurs an expense of 45l., and the shearing of the sheep 158. 7d. The artificers' work, repairs, &c., amounted to 2200l.; ten brace of small deer cost 60%.; and 50l. 2s. 6d. were spent in bringing 90 fallow deer from the Isle of Wight. The food for the deer costs annually 3337.; the food for the game 517., and eggs for breeding the game 157. These items, with a few others, make the expenditure 54777. Against this has to be placed, 450l. sale of live stock, 6427. sale of timber, 3521. for grazing-rents, and 2407. for venison-fees.

17. The expenditure of Hampton Court and Bushy Park is 34597.; the income 2407., chiefly drawn from venison-fees. The salaries and wages amount to 750l.; artificers' work, &c., 20007.; 30 brace of deer cost 150%.; the food of the deer is 697.; and the rates, taxes, and tithes amount to 3487.

18. Windsor Forest and Parks shew an expenditure of 70917., and an income of 40197. The following are the heads of income:

The expenditure in salaries and allowances is 30447. 11s. 10d.; this sum is divided among thirty-two persons. The rearing of pheasants, attending buffaloes, and night-watching, cost 727.; and the wages of woodmen and labourers employed in nursery-work, the preparation of produce for sale, &c., amount to 36517. The provender for the cattle costs 2207.; the food for the deer, 1027.; and for the game, 625l. The rent of premises near the Long Walk is 4207. per annum; and of land at Virginia Water, 847.

To make this statement complete, we will give the income and expenditure of the Phoenix Park in Ireland and of Holyrood Park in Scotland, both of which are under the care of the same commissioners.

The income of the Phoenix Park is 948., of which 8537. consist of grazing-rents. The expenditure is 46157., of which 20007. consist of salaries, allowances, and wages; 13007. for repairs; 5087. for draintiles; 1967. for watering the roads; 50%. for seeds; 937. for police; 557.

U

for lighting lamps; and 407. for salary of schoolmistress in the National School in the park.

The income of Holyrood Park is 6517.; the expenditure, 7591. The former consists of 5861. grazing-rents, 52l. for rent of land, and the remainder from various sources; the latter consists chiefly of salaries and wages.

In the following table a summary is given of the facts just stated:

INCOME AND EXPENDITURE OF FORESTS, PARKS, &c. DURING THE YEAR ENDING

It must be noted that the great deficiency here is in the parks, not the forests; the actual state of the principal forests will be seen in the Appendix.

ORESTS present in every country of the globe a very peculiar character. Each region. receives from its forests an individual physiognomy; the latter, in their trees, assume a bolder character in the same proportion as the region becomes so, the distribution of heat, of light, and the different conditions of climate being taken into consideration. In order to convince the reader, we will take a rapid glance over Ju the principal forest districts of the earth. Let us begin with that vast region which extends from the southern declivity of the Himalaya mountains as far as the sea of the Laccadives and the Indies-an ancient land, in which life has been developed from the most remote epoch, and in which nature has scattered vegetable life in profusion. Hindostan has forests which have resisted the progress of civilisation, and which form one of the most distinct features of this country. Vegetation reflects there the devouring ardour of the sky under which it is developed. Among these forests, some present compact rows of the large species of these climates. The teak-tree, which of itself forms vast forests, the tamarind, mango, ebony, bamboos, with which the fan-palm and other species of the same family are sometimes united, cover with their tall slender stems the first heights of the Nylgherry mountains. Elsewhere there are forests more full of thickets, and more impenetrable, entirely interwoven with bindweeds and vine-like plants, and thorny bushes, of which arborescent leguminosa, mimosas, cassias, constitute the trees. The rigid and sombre pines of our climates never darken with their foliage the lively colours of these forests.

Beside these forests, formed by the lofty trunks of the kinds I have

1 This chapter has been translated for this work from the French of F. L. Marny.

just named, are placed other forests of less elevated species, vast masses of shrubs, of briers, of reeds, where man finds not a path or an open space on which to place his foot. These are the celebrated jungles, which attain in Orissa, Ceylon, and Assam, their greatest extent. These gigantic thickets serve as a repair for tigers, elephants, buffaloes, rhinoceroses, and all those animals obnoxious to man. In Orissa roams the jungly-gau or ox of the jungles, which seems to be the wild stock of the domestic cattle of India. Sometimes these jungles are spread over a moist marshy soil, into which he who penetrates, axe in hand, this vegetable wilderness, runs the risk of sinking over-head. Such are the forests that extend over the Delta of the Ganges, and in which the sandori, called false mangosteen, and Indian sandal-wood, forms the dominant species. This region, thickset with wood, which is indebted to this latter circumstance for its name of sunderbunds, is, like all these jungles, still more than others, a focus of deleterious miasma, from whence cholera and malignant fevers proceed, carried by the monsoons, to alight upon the open and inhabited countries. These forests of briers and reeds remind one by their aspect of the vegetation of the subpolar countries, with this difference, that the extreme heat arrests in the former the growth of the trees, whilst in the latter it is the hoarfrost which produces the same effect. Every thing in these vast jungles reposes in the immobility of death and the monotony of winter; but it is a winter of drought. The atmosphere, heavy and motionless, impresses upon the air a dull tinge and a fatiguing weight, which oppresses the soul and enervates the strength of him who penetrates into these forests. For a long time the dead trees remain erect with branches deprived of foliage, unless a tempest comes to overthrow them. Occasionally, however, flowers of brilliant colours, the thorny cotton-tree, the momata, with scarlet and purple shades, contrast with the brown and yellowish tint of the mass. And upon the borders of these miserable forests, loftier species relieve, by their majestic trunks, the lines traced by the tufts of shrubs and reeds.

Upon the mountains of Hindostan and of the Indian Archipelago the forests are often disposed in stages. First appear the mangroves, which advance into the midst of the ocean, and extend their trunk over shores inundated by the tide. The cocoa-nut-trees which grow near the sea form forests in Ceylon, in the Laccadives, and cover the entire length of the Malabar coast and the province of Canara. Around the towns of Travancore, Calicut, Tellicheery, Goa, and Bombay, reign forests composed only of trees of this kind; then come the teak, then the sandal-wood. This disposition is observed especially in Malabar. This latter tree forms in the environs of Chatrakal, to the north of

Seringapatam, forests where the tigers prevent the Hindoo from penetrating; and the number of trunks that the forests of Magada contain, to the west of Bangalore, is at times beyond 3000.

When we re-ascend towards the Himalaya the forests take a character approaching more nearly to that of our own climates. Jacquemont was struck with the analogy which exists between the distribution of vegetation presented to his view in this chain of mountains, and that which is to be met with in the Alps. Yet this vegetation of the Himalayas has also its different shades and appearances. The character of the forests varies upon the summits according to the exposition. Upon the first stage, along the lower slopes, grows the Euphobia souson, which is wholly wanting in the superior stage, where the stems of the long-leaved pine closely press each other. Alders and willows are intermingled with these trees in the districts of Cachmere. Elsewhere, as at Kedar-Kanta, the oak is the species that prevails. Let us permit the celebrated Jacquemont to trace for us the picture of the arborescent vegetation of these regions. The Himalaya chain has then, for him, only the grandeur of its dimensions, but the eye is soon accustomed to this horizon of mountains, and then it no longer finds there, as in the plains, any thing more than a continual uniformity of another kind. There are not more verdant valleys than naked and jagged peaks, inaccessible escapements, as also the level summits which crown them so often in the Alps.

So much for the forms. The vegetation which covers them is equally monotonous. How should it be otherwise, since it is diversity of sites which produces that of plants, and that here almost all the sites resemble each other? Woods, where the variety of species that so southern a latitude would appear to command is already greatly reduced by the absolute elevation, overshadow the brink of torrents in valleys the most torrent-worn. Upon the declivities of the mountains, one sees also a narrow line of darker verdure, marking out the course of rivulets sufficiently rare, which are gliding there. Their sides are of a monotonous green without brilliancy. There are neither prairies nor pastures, but every where, except upon the loftiest peaks, an unequal and thick grass, too short to make a prairie, too long for a pasture. Numerous blocks are scattered over this common herbage; disruptions have often strewn over it small débris, or rocks in its place level the slopes. It is a range of high mountains which, from their base to their summit, are invested with this dull mixture of grass and rocks. More frequently upon this flat and monotonous foundation trees are dispersed. Below, from 2000 to 2500 (French) mètres, on the southern exposures, they are almost all pines. In colder situations, but between