PHILIPPINE RESINS, GUMS, SEED OILS, AND 

 ESSENTIAL OILS 



By Augustus P. West and William H. Brown 

 INTRODUCTION 



The Philippine forests contain a large number of trees and 

 other plants which produce seed oils, essential oils, resins, and 

 gums. A number of such forest products are used locally, while 

 a few enter into the foreign commerce of the Islands. This 

 section aims to present a somewhat popular account of these 

 various products. 



A short account of agricultural, oil-yielding plants has been 

 included for the sake of completeness. This has seemed the 

 more advisable as there are only a few of them. The most 

 important oil-producing plants, which can be regarded as strictly 

 agricultural and never wild, are the coconut palm and peanut. 

 There are in the Philippines a number of cultivated medicinal 

 plants which contain oils. They are, however, for the most part 

 unimportant, and oil is not extracted from them in the Arch- 

 ipelago. 



Some of the resinous products and seed oils from Philippine 

 forests are used extensively in the preparation of paints and 

 varnishes, while others are employed for medicinal purposes, 

 illumination, the manufacture of soaps, etc. A number of the 

 resins, which occur most abundantly, are of comparatively little 

 value at the present time, but some of these would seem to have 

 promising possibilities. 



A few of the Philippine essential oils (the odoriferous, volatile 

 oils obtained from vegetable sources) are used commercially in 

 the preparation of perfumes ; and others would be valuable com- 

 mercially, if this industry were properly developed. Acacia far- 

 nesiana (aroma) is a very common species in grasslands and 

 open places in the Philippines. In France this shrub is grown 

 extensively for the perfume obtained from its flowers, known 

 as cassie flowers. There is no record of such a utilization in 

 the Philippines. 



The chief difficulty encountered in the collection of products 

 from Philippine forest trees is that the forests usually contain a 



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