AMIvKR-AN I'OKKSTKKS IN TIli: TROI'ICS 157 



Sonic of these countries are seeking capital to make their lumbering 

 industry more efficient, and capital in the United States and Europe 

 is hegiiming to turn to the tropics for investment in lumbering on a 

 larger scale. 



I'orest properties in tropical countries have too often been in the 

 hands of unscrupulous speculators and promoters who do not intend 

 to develop them but unload them on others. Capital has often been 

 attracted to such investments on superficial and untrustworthy reports, 

 whereas if it had been an investment in mineral resources, a mining 

 engineer would have been called upon to make a report before the 

 in\estmcnt was made. The demand is now rising for trained men to 

 make such investigations. For this work there is no better training 

 than a good general course in forestry. 



Some time ago the writer was asked to examine a tract of timber in 

 the tropics in which a great deal of capital had been invested. The 

 firm stated that it had had the opinion of an engineer and practical 

 logging and milling men. but something was wrong — the proposition 

 was not paying. It finallv concluded it would be advisable to ask a 

 forester to look the property over. While this company was logging 

 all the timber, it was especially anxious to get as large an amount as 

 possible of a certain class which brought a high price. Its estimates 

 by practical cruisers showed that this class of timber was in the forest, 

 but on examination by the writer of the lumber cut, it was not found 

 in the yards. An examination of the forest showed that while the 

 former cruisers were nearly correct as to the total amount of timber 

 per acre there was very little of the special kind that might have made 

 the operation a success. What probably happened was that the former 

 cruisers confused two other tree species with the most valuable one, 

 and put them all in as one. A well-rounded course in field dendrology 

 such as is given in our forest schools would have enabled these "prac- 

 tical" cruisers to distinguish the minute differences between this most 

 valuable species and the others, and thus the error could have been 

 avoided. 



In another case a forester was asked to check a cruise that was made 

 in a tropical forest property. He found that the estimate of the amount 

 of timber of a special kind on this tract was too high, because the area 

 that the species occupied was over-estimated. Another mistake made 

 was, attention was not called to the fact that a considerable part of 

 the area in question was in an exceedingly rough country and under 

 present conditions it would not pay to log the timber so situated. 



