Museum of Philippine Forest Products. 617 



added from collections made incidentally, as in investigating tracts 

 for proposed concessions, donations from licensees, etc. Of the 

 planks a large proportion have been presented. To acquire a 

 specially fine plank the Bureau of Forestry is occasionally obliged 

 to buy a whole log, have it sawn to order and after selecting the 

 choicest planks dispose of the remainder to private purchasers. 



The logs shown in the museum are sections three feet high sawn 

 down midway to half their height and having a four inch bevel 

 on the upper edge, so that each one shows bark, sapwood and 

 heartwood, and tranverse, longitudinal and diagonal sections. 

 With perhaps half a dozen exceptions they have all been collected 

 with botanical material, which is deposited in the herbarium of 

 the Bureau of Science, each species being thus positively de- 

 termined. There are now over four hundred logs in the museum, 

 representing about 225 species. The planks, the standard length 

 of which is ten feet, are arranged so as completely to cover the 

 walls. They range from six or eight inches to nearly four feet 

 in width, the average being between two and three feet. They 

 are all polished so as to preserve their natural color as nearly as 

 possible, except that an unpolished plank is sometimes shown 

 beside a polished one of the same species, the pair being generally 

 cut from the same log. The planks now number nearly a hundred, 

 representing about 65 species. Besides these, there are twenty 

 pillars, each sheathed in a different wood, among which are 

 several species not represented among the planks. Both the 

 planks and the pillars have labels which contain, besides the 

 common and scientific names, a series of notes on the durability, 

 mechanical properties, distribution and supply, sizes and prices 

 of the various species. Further information regarding the forest 

 area of the Islands, the bulk and value of the standing timber, 

 etc., is furnished by a series of colored maps and by framed signs 

 conspicuously displayed on the walls, so that even the casual 

 visitor can obtain a great deal of information without the neces- 

 sity of a guide. Of the entire space occupied by the log speci- 

 mens about one-fifth is filled with logs belonging to the Diptero- 

 carp or Lauan family and the same is true of the wall space 

 covered by the planks. This family is the only one in the Islands 

 that furnishes timber in great bulk. There is no species belong- 

 ing to any other tree family that can be classified as abundant in 



