744 JOURNAL OF FORESTRY 



interior mountains), thus occasioned were borne by the field men as 

 all in the day's work, and the record of these foresters, and no less of 

 their Filipino companions and assistants, forms one of the finest pages 

 in the history of any colonial administration. It has set a standard for 

 their successors, who thus find their tasks of later years much easier, 

 and who now are able to take up lines of work for which the way had 

 been paved by their predecessors ; to meet new conditions by building 

 more elaborately on the foundations laboriously but cheerfully laid in 

 the early years. It is such a development as this, made necessary by 

 changing conditions, that it is the purpose of this paper to describe. 



The average Filipino is far more docile, far more tractable, than the 

 average American. I might almost say he is more reasonable ; cer- 

 tainly he is more easily led. Undoubtedly he is more impressionable. 

 Thus it is but reasonable to expect that the results of a pro-forestry 

 propaganda in the Philippines, in proportion to time and energy ex- 

 pended, would be more promptly evident than similar efforts in Amer- 

 ica ; and, other things being equal, I am convinced that such is true. 

 But the law of compensation holds in this as in other matters, and if 

 the forester in the Philippines is free from many handicaps with which 

 his colleague in America has had to contend, he has his full share of 

 his own peculiar difficulties. 



Chief among these is the complexity of dialects. There is no com- 

 mon language in the Philippines. A knowledge of Spanish has always 

 been restricted to a small educated class. The average Filipino, even 

 in the city, speaks his own Malay dialect, and either knows no Spanish 

 at all or merely a few dozen or score of the simplest and most ordinary 

 words and phrases. The peasants in the fields and villages, the "mon- 

 teses" in the hills, know hardly a single word. There are now more 

 Filipinos who have a working knowledge of English than had ever 

 possessed Spanish in an equal degree. But even this number is inade- 

 quately small, and is largely restricted to the younger generation, 

 trained in the public schools since the American occupation, and to 

 those government officials and employees who have found a more or 

 less complete knowledge of the language a part of the necessary equip- 

 ment for holding their positions. Other than these, the number of 

 Filipinos who can read an English newspaper or circular is negligibly 

 small. For the great, the overwhelming, majority of Filipinos a lec- 

 ture must be delivered or an article must be prepared in their own 

 dialect or not at all; and the number and complexity of such dialects 

 is enough to discourage the most fervent enthusiast. Just what this 

 number is, it is hard to say with any degree of accuracy. I have heard 



