In this age of International Exhibitions, which, when usefully
directed, form what the newspapers pleasantly call ‘a wholesome mania,’
it is well to inquire into the causes, more or less urgent, which call
these undertakings into being—the good they are expected by their
promoters to effect not only to the towns or countries in which they
are held, but to all the nationalities who take part in them; and the
probable results of their success, if they are successful. It is of
course open to objectors to deny the soundness of all these premises,
and to question the logical deduction of their usefulness, in the case
of all the projected Exhibitions which are brought under their notice.
And when—as is almost necessarily the case—an appeal is made to the
pockets of the public in the initiatory stage of the undertaking,
objectors are not few in number, and not particularly partial, or even
moderate, in the nature of their criticisms. Within due bounds, indeed,
it is well that it should be so. Exhibitions got up mainly or entirely
for the purpose of advertising any particular branch of trade, may be
advantageous to that trade individually; but the end and object is not
so much an harmonious and wholesome impetus to trade and manufacture
generally, as a rivalry more or less rancorously conducted amongst the
exhibitors.
The prospectus, classification, and other papers relating to the
proposed Forestry Exhibition to be held in Edinburgh in the months of
July, August, and September 1884 are now before the public; and it may
be useful to inquire how the idea was suggested, and whether or not it
is likely to be worked out with advantage to the community at large.
The primary cause which appears to have called forth the project
has been no sudden or ephemeral one. To grasp it rightly, we must go
back for at least a score of years, and carry our readers with us to
the government of our Eastern Empire. There we shall find that a long
course of unrestricted spoliation and waste had denuded the banks of
rivers in proximity to the seaboard of all their protecting vegetation.
The river-sources, far up in the inaccessible hills, had indeed been
safe from the inroads of the timber merchants, and had been preserved
from too rapid evaporation by the virgin forests which surrounded
them. But in the low country the trees could be easily cut and floated
down to the coast during the annual floods. A country deprived of its
trees is doomed to drought; and India soon began to suffer from the
reckless destruction of its forests. The officials of the government,
while fully aware of the vast waste of capital and revenue going on
under their eyes, were quite unable successfully to cope with it.
They therefore delegated their duties to subordinates, who in many
ways winked at, if they did not countenance the continuance of the
evils which they were supposed to counteract and uproot. The absolute
necessity of a higher-paid and more capable class of officials, whose
duty should be confined to the conservancy and replanting of the
forests, forced upon the government of India the formation of a Forest
Department.
But when it was sought to construct this Department from the resources
of Great Britain—the natural nursery for Anglo-Indian officials—these
were found wholly inadequate; and more humiliating still, there was
not even the means necessary to train efficient forest officers. It
was decided by the government, and tacitly conceded by the public,
that Great Britain could not supply finished cadets for the Forest
Department of India. And from that day to this, young men with a
smattering of botany have been packed off to the Forest seminaries of
France and Germany for the peculiar education required.
It is not now our object to show how the government of India has
suffered in the interval by the want of a proper system of forest
training in Great Britain. Waste and spoliation went on, of course,
uncontrolled. But we think that the _raison d’être_ of a Forestry
Exhibition will now be tolerably apparent to at least the majority
of our readers. Indeed, the wonder is that Great Britain has so long
remained quiescent under the implied reproach of neglecting what is
not only a useful but a profitable branch of estate management. This
reproach, which had long weighed on the minds of all those who had the
good of the country at heart, at length found public expression at
the meetings of the principal Societies of Scotland who represent the
landed interest of the country, and resolutions were passed pledging
their members to the support of a Forestry Exhibition.
Meanwhile, the great success of the Fisheries Exhibition in London had
induced the executive Committee there to try and achieve for other
industries similar benefits to what they had conferred on the fishermen
of England. And they, too, pitched upon forestry as a branch of science
well worthy of encouragement. But when it was represented to them that
the same idea, first mooted in Scotland, had already assumed practical
shape there, they courteously gave way, and conceded to Scotland the
well-deserved right of holding in her capital the first Forestry
Exhibition of Great Britain.
Nearly all the foreign powers and the representatives of our colonial
and Indian empire are to be found in the list of those who have joined
the undertaking as members. And the following letter, which has been
sent to our diplomatic representatives abroad, rightly expresses
the consensus of official and public opinion on the merit of the
undertaking:
(CIRCULAR-COMMERCIAL.)