372 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



dealt with, but even for these special reserved areas no data are given 

 as to total stand per acre. The Netherlands East Indies classify their 

 forests as "teak forests" and "wild timber forests." and of the latter 

 they say, in The Yearbook of the Netherlands East Indies for 1916: 



"The outlying possessions, by which is understood all the islands of the 

 archipelago except Java and Madura, have a total area of 180,000,000 hectares 

 (690,000 square miles). According to a rough estimate, 50 per cent of this 

 area is covered with wild timber forests which, as in Java, are composed of 

 numerous varieties of trees intermingled one with the other. * * * The ex- 

 ploitation of the woods by private parties may only be done after a special forest 

 concession has been obtained. Although a great number of requests for these 

 concessions have been granted and private enterprise has increased considerably 

 during recent years, very little importance must be attached to it. 



As long as a country maintains this attitude toward one of its largest 

 assets, it is not probable that we can expect any great development of 

 this asset by private enterprise. . 



In the Philippines, with the advent of modern systems of lumbering, 

 we have had the first attempt to obtain accurate estimates as to the 

 stand per acre in tropical forests. This is the logical outcome of ap- 

 plying American systems of forestry and lumbering in the tropics. 

 In the States we are accustomed to think of our forests in terms of 

 so many thousands of board feet per acre, and when we came to deal 

 with these new forests we at once started to gather data which would 

 enable us to compare them with stands of timber with which we 

 had previously been working. Furthermore, American systems of 

 logging had developed along lines entirely different from those in use 

 in other countries and the stand per acre bears a much closer relation 

 to the cost of extraction in our systems of concentrated working than it 

 does where the forest is worked by a system of small coupes dis- 

 tributed over a large area. Before the American lumberman could be 

 induced to invest his money in the development of these forests, these 

 data as to stand per acre had to be acquired, and thus we have had the 

 beginning of volume estimates for tropical forests. 



At first the work went forward very slowly. Administrative duties 

 claimed a large portion of the time of the officers qualified to undertake 

 the work and much preliminary data had to be acquired as to the extent 

 and composition of a large and little-explored forest area. At first 

 very little actual measurement of stand? was attempted. It was 

 necessary to cover a large area and estimation was based on ocular 

 examination and comparison with stands of known density at home. 

 Unfortunately this tendency to report on as large areas as possible 



