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It is recruited from the corps of military (royal)
engineers, and by civil engineers taken from the
government engineering colleges in England and
India, known, respectively, as Cooper's Hill and
the Rurki College. The bulk of admissions are
from Cooper's Hill, the Rurki College being
intended for natives of India, who obtain a proportion
 of the appointments.
12. ZForests.—The management of the extensive
 forest tracts in various parts of India has,
until lately, been conducted on no settled plan
except in one or two provinces. But, within the
last few years, the rapid progress of the denudation
 of the forests, arising out of the great demand
for timber for railway purposes, and for export
to Europe, has attracted attention, and active
measures have now been taken to secure the
proper management of this important item of the
state property. To every province which contains
any forest. tracts worth preserving, a conservator
 of forests has been appointed, with a staff of
assistants. The greater part of the forest tracts
are state property, which, under the denomination
of waste land, has never been alienated ; but leases
have also been taken of those forests which belong
to private individuals, or to the chiefs, of native
states, and are conveniently situated for working,
so that the whole are now directly under government
 management; and active measures are
being taken, by strict conservancy and planting