The Philippine Forestry Exhibit 



By Arthur T. Fischer. 



THE Philippine Forestry Exhibit at the Panama- 

 Pacific Exposition in San Francisco is the 

 largest exhibit of its kind there, occupying 10,000 

 square feet of space and displaying some 450 different 

 species of wood in panels and samples. 



The main features are 10-foot panels of varying 

 widths, covering 260 feet of wall space and representing 

 131 species of 

 woods; and manu- 

 factures of differ- 

 ent woods, such as 

 furnitures, floors 

 and interior finish 

 for which there is 

 an export market 

 and which can be 

 furnished in com- 

 mercial quantities. 

 All the materials 

 inside of the allot- 

 ted space used in 

 the installation of 

 the exhibits and 

 booth construction 

 are of Philippine 

 woods or forest 

 products and have 

 created much fa- 

 vorable comment. 



About one-third 

 of the area of the 

 Philippine Islands, 

 that is, 40,000 

 square miles, is 

 covered with vir- 

 gin forest, with a 



stand conservatively estimated at 200 billion board feet, 

 of which 148 billion belong to the Dipterocarp family 

 of which the lauans are in the majority. Ninety-nine per 

 cent of all this timber belongs to the Government and is 

 under the administrative control of the Bureau of 

 Forestry. 



The entire administrative and investigative work of 

 the Bureau of Forestry is shown. It is very interesting 

 to note the progress along investigative lines made dur- 

 ing the American occupation ; in 1900 only about 400 

 species were known and the botanical and wood collec- 

 tions made by the Bureau employes number about 

 26,000 up to 1915, out of which the number now identi- 

 fied is 4,200 woody plants and 2,200 tree species, of which 

 about 1,000 are timber trees. On an area of 120,000 



THE MINOR I'OREST PRODUCTS SECTION 



In this section there are on exhibit in many forms gum copal, resins, gutta percha and 

 rattan, all products of the Philippine forests which are well worth careful inspection. 



square miles the Philippines have four or five times as 

 many species as the entire United States. 



A woodman from temperate regions is usually very 

 much bewildered and often discouraged when he first 

 realizes the very great number of forms with which he 

 lias to deal in the Philippine forest. He cannot work 

 long in the forests before he discovers that the bulk of 



the stand is made 

 up of compara- 

 tively few species. 

 With the great 

 number of forms 

 occurring in the 

 Philippines it is 

 very natural that 

 the problems of 

 silviculture and 

 management are 

 correspondingly in- 

 creased over the 

 problems in the 

 temperate regions, 

 and it is just this 

 fact that makes a 

 forester's work in 

 the tropics so 

 much more inter- 

 esting. In 1911, 

 the investigative 

 work of the Bu- 

 reau of Forestry 

 was centered at 

 the Forest School 

 at Los Banos, La- 

 guna, on the lower 

 slopes of Mt. Ma- 

 quiling, about 25,000 acres of which are forested and 

 included in the Government reserve. This makes not 

 only a splendid laboratory for the students of the For- 

 est School but also a splendid area for research and in- 

 vestigation. Extensive studies of growth and reproduc- 

 tion were started, measurement of the rate of growth 

 of hundreds of trees in the forest and of many more in 

 the nurseries and plantations were taken. To date 317 

 species have been handled in the nurseries and 83 species 

 set out in permanent plantations. A number of these 

 species offer promise as successful plantation crops. 



As a result of the scientific work done by the Bureau 

 and those who have cooperated with it the following 

 things have been accomplished. 



1 . Mapping showing the location of the principal forest 

 areas of the Islands. 



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