78 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



lings are growing, that it is hardly rec- 

 ognizable as a tree. There is no soil 

 except in an occasional hollow, but the 

 thick layer of moss which covers every- 

 thing acts as an ideal retainer of water. 

 These last two types, on account of 

 their mossy character, form the most 

 perfect protective forest imaginable. 



Thus the main characteristics of 

 these forests are the abundance of large 

 timber trees, the remarkably favorable 

 conditions of growth, and their great 

 value for protection on the higher 

 slopes. 



Ill— THE PROBLEMS 



The first problem to strike the outside 

 observer is the lack of knowledge as 

 to what there actually is in the forests. 

 Under Spanish rule there had been no 

 proper study made of the llora of the 

 islands or of the different woods. When 

 the islands were acc|uired all this vast 

 work, which means far more in a trop- 

 ical country, on account of the greater 

 luxuriance of vegetation, than people 

 living in a temperate country can 

 realize, remained to be done. N^ot only 

 is little known about the species and 

 woods, but even the actual location and 

 extent of the commercial timber of the 

 islands is still to a certain degree a 

 matter of conjecture. 



The most difficult problem, however, 

 is the Land Question, involving, as it 

 does, the relation of the forests to the 

 population and the settlement of the 

 land. Some idea of the importance of 

 the role played by the Bureau of For- 

 estry in the solution of the Land Ques- 

 tion may be obtained when it is con- 

 sidered that the Homestead Law re- 

 quires that any piece of land, before 

 being entered, must be certified to by 

 the Bureau of Forestry as being more 

 valuable for agricultural than for for- 

 estry purposes, and that there was a 

 movement on foot last year to place the 

 Bureau of Lands under the Bureau 

 of Forestry. 



The first phase of the problem, sup- 

 plying the needs of the people for fire- 

 wood and builfling material, is compar- 

 atively simple. 



The second phase, the settlement of 

 the land, is difficult in the extreme, in- 

 volving the treatment of Caingins, 

 Cogans, and Homesteads. Caingins are 

 a system of shifting cultivation prac- 

 tised in forest lands, which is destructive 

 and wasteful in the extreme. To make 

 a Caingin, the Filipino moves into a 

 body of fine virgin timber and begins 

 by cutting all the undergrowth. As 

 soon as the undergrowth has lain on 

 the ground long enough to dry out 

 he fells all the trees. Then he sets fire 

 to the area. This burns the under 

 growth, but merely chars the stems of 

 the larger trees. The result is that the 

 ground is covered with a network of 

 huge fallen trunks. In such spaces as 

 he finds between these trunks, the Fili- 

 pino plants a haphazard crop of gabi 

 (a kind of edible root), corn, or to- 

 bacco. He makes no pretense of plow 

 ing, or even scratching the ground, bui 

 merely pokes a hole with a stick and 

 jnits in the seeds. Neither does he 

 attempt to keep out the weeds. The 

 result is that within a couple of years 

 the area is so overgrown that it ha? 

 to be abandoned. He then moves on 

 and destroys another valuable piece of 

 forest. At Port Banga, on the Island 

 of Mindanao, it is estimated that from 

 $75,000 to $100,000 worth of timber 

 was destroyed by Caingins in a single 

 year. The abandoned Caingin, if fire 

 is kept out, will be covered with a 

 growth of small, inferior tree species, 

 under which, in the course of time, 

 more valuable species will seed in if 

 there are any seed trees in the neigh- 

 borhood. If fire gets in, it gives the 

 grass a chance against the trees, an 1. 

 as successive fires occur, the grass be- 

 comes more and more firmly estab- 

 lished until we get the regular Cogan. 

 or waste grass land. It has been esti 

 mated that this Cogan, which is at 

 present absolutely useless, forms thirty 

 per cent of the total area of the islands. 



One would naturally ask: Why does 

 not the Filipino cultivate this Cogan 

 instead of making a Caingin ? The rea- 

 son is two-fold : In the first place, be 

 cause the grass is rather hard to eradi- 

 cate without cattle, and cattle are ratlier 



