ISO 



AMERICAN FORESTRY 



as the forest reserves are established 

 and a force organized, the forests will 

 be protected against Caingins as against 

 other destructive agencies. 



Cogan or grass lands cannot be util- 

 ized until the government clears up the 

 invalid Cacique claims to it. This could 

 be done by a properly-collected land 

 tax, which would immediately cause 

 them to drop their claims, because the 

 land is of no use to them and they are 

 all land-poor; or, preferably, by lay- 

 ing off the whole of the islands into 

 townships, sections, quarter-sections, 

 and forties, as with the public domain in 

 the United States, and making every- 

 body prove up his claim. 



The attempts at making a survey of 

 the island;; have so far been worse than 

 futile. They have consisted in maps 

 of occasional isolated small fields made 

 by the Bureau of Lands, for the pur- 

 pose of marking the boundaries, each 

 map being made separate, so that it 

 will be impossible to tie them together. 

 This is costing considerable sums of 

 money, which is all wasted, because the 

 work will eventually have to be done 

 all over again. The only solution of 

 this problem a solution suggested by 

 men who have been in the islands for 

 some time and have given the matter 

 considerable thought is for the gov- 

 ernment to "grasp the bull by the 

 horns" and have the United States Geo- 

 logical Survey send a party over to do 

 it properly, once for all. This was ad- 

 vocated by President Roosevelt in a 

 special message to Congress, but the 

 commission refused to have it done, 

 perhaps because they thought they could 

 do it without outside help. 



For the regulation of the taking up 

 of homesteads, a sound scheme, sug- 

 gested by a member of the Bureau of 

 Forestry, is that certain bodies of land 

 suitable for cultivation should be se- 

 lected by the Bureau of Forestry and 

 notifications sent around to the people 

 of the neighborhood, so as to give any- 

 body desiring a homestead a chance to 

 send in an application. Then all these 

 applicants could be moved bodily onto 

 the land. The advantages of this scheme 

 to the people themselves would be two- 



fold : First they would be kept to- 

 gether in a community, which is the 

 way they like to live ; secondly, the 

 haphazard, hit-or-miss element of the 

 ignorant individual picking out a piece 

 of land would be obviated. Of course, 

 this would also enable the Cogan lands 

 to be settled up where cultivating them 

 did not involve too much hardship. 



In utilizing the forests the most 

 astounding progress has been made 

 from a lumbering point of view. From 

 the silvicnltural point of view, it is un- 

 fortunate that conditions have forced 

 the bureau to open up the forests so 

 rapidly before more was known about 

 how to cut them. But, considered 

 broadly, the opening up of the forests, 

 though perhaps not such a rapid open- 

 ing, is the essential preliminary to their 

 future management, without which 

 nothing can be done, so that the amount 

 of loss suffered in the beginning will 

 be more than repaid in the end. 



For the control of logging opera- 

 tions, certain logging rules have been 

 laid down by the bureau in each case, 

 so as to do as little injury to the forest 

 as possible. For example, the rules for 

 the Cadwallader concession in Bataan 

 Province, on Manila Bay, are in sub- 

 stance as follows: 



General, for agricultural and non- 

 agricultural land. 



1. Forest on land below 500 feet ele- 

 vation can be cut clean, because this 

 land is considered agricultural. 



2. Timber cut, used, or wasted in 

 violation of the cutting rules,, or forest 

 regulations, is to be paid for. 



3. Tops, etc., are to be used for fire- 

 wood wherever practical. 



4. Felling is to be done with saws as 

 far as possible. 



3. No trees are to be left lodged. 



6. No stumps are to be higher than 

 the principal buttress, or, without but- 

 tresses, than the diameter of the tree on 

 the stump. 



7. Defective logs with fifty per cent 

 or more of clear, sound timber shall be 

 utilized. 



8. Minor products shall be gathered 

 if possible. 



