| Show FORESTS ON IStANDS Millions of Acres of Valuable Timber in Philippines f COVER HALF ARCHIPELAGO Thoro Arc Over Five Hundred Treo Species On tho Southern Islands There Arc Magnificent Forests I With Trees More than 150 Feet High nnd More than Four Feet in Diameter There Aro no Roado or River Driveways in the Island Forests Worty of Mention Washington Nov 2GThe dlylslgn of customs and Insular affairs of thc War department has made public a summary of the first report of the Philippine Bureau of Forestry organized organ-ized In Its present form under an order of the military Governor dated April H 1900 Its first work was confined to ascertaining the condition of the records received from the Spanish Government Gov-ernment under which that bureau had not only the care of the forests but also the survey of the public lands The laws hi force at the time of the 1 American occupation arc said to be inline in-line with the most advanced foreign legislation Of Europe but were not fully enforced and licenaed the cutting of any and everything The result was hat valuable rubber guttapercha and YlangYJang trees were taken and I even the most valuable used as firewood fire-wood The old regulations were translated trans-lated and revised taking effect In their new form on July 1st last They provide for a system of licensing by which permits to cut timber can be Hocurcd the fees bEIng based upoit the Aarletles of which 396 arc named In the order After the regulations were promulgated promul-gated mpre than fifty additional species of trees became known and others are being brought to the knowledge of the bureau almost every week The DIrector DI-rector Cant Ahem estimates the i total number of tree species in the archipelago at nearly COO There are no forests of any one species rarely more than three or four trees or one variety being found grouped together so that a lumberman looking for n shipload of one kind of timber would find It practically Impossible Impos-sible to cut that and no other and cargoes must be assembled from different dif-ferent points Capt Ahern slates that from different dif-ferent sources of Information he Is led to believe that the public forest lands comprise from onefourth to possibly onehalf of the area of the Philippines or from twenty to forty million acres There are fully five million acres of virgin forest owned by the State In the Islands of Mlndoro and Pnragua The Island of Mindanao with an area of some twenty million acres Is almost al-most entirely covered with timber and even in the province of Gayagan In Luzon there are more than two million mil-lion acres of forest In many other provinces of Luzon especially In the country close to Manila Man-ila much timber has been cut and to fill large contracts the lumbermen are obliged to go quite a distance from the city In order to find a suitable tract tractapt Ahern mentions tracts of virgin forests to be seen in the Southern islands where from ten to twenty thousand cubic feet of timber tim-ber per acre was standing with trees more than one hundred and fifty feet in height the trunk clear of branches for sixty feet and more than four feet In diameter He states that In these forests there are millions of cubic feet of timber which should be cut In order to thin this dense Growth so that the maximum annual growth could be obtained ob-tained There are a large variety of valuable gum rubber and guttapercha trees seventeen dyewoods and the Ylang Ylang the oil from the blossoms of the latter tree is the base of so many perfumes per-fumes There are no forest roads or river driveways in the Islands considered consid-ered worthy of mentioning At present pres-ent the trees are felled far from any road and hauled out very slowly by one or more caribaos with the result that many tracts are lee untouched |
