CHAPTER XX 

 PHILIPPINES 



The Philippine Islands are one of the few reservoirs of tropical 

 timber which have been carefully investigated. The Spanish 

 Government had granted very few alienations so that when the 

 United States took possession of the islands in 1898 there were 

 41,000 square miles of virgin forests placed under our control. 

 Since that time the Philippine Bureau of Forestry has been sys- 

 tematically estimating the stands, looking for suitable logging 

 chances and testing the different kinds of timber. Hence, there 

 are few equal areas of tropical woodland which have been so 

 thoroughly described. The data here presented were obtained 

 from the publications of the Insular government and special 

 papers in the technical journals. 



The total land area in the islands of 123,000 square miles is 

 divided as follows: 



^ Percent 



Tillage 10 



Grassland 40 



Second growth timberland i6§ 



Virgin forest 33I 



100 



Only the virgin forest has been reported upon by the Philippine 

 Bureau of Forestry. The second growth stands occur on areas 

 which have reforested after being abandoned for tillage and do not 

 contain merchantable timber in amounts large enough to repay 

 anything but local development on a small scale. 



The Bureau of Forestry has divided the virgin forest into the 

 following forest types: 



Per cent of 

 virgin forest area 



Dipterocarp types 75 



Molave type lo 



Pine type 5 



Mangrove t5T)e 2 



Mossy (mountain) forest type 8 



100 

 IS* 



