SOME NEW OR LITTLE KNOWN PHILIPPINE 

 PRODUCTS. 



By O. W. BARRETT. 



Chief, Division of Horticulture, Bureau of Agriculture, 

 Philippine Islands. 



SITUATED in the extreme western part of the Pacific 

 and extending from near the Tropic of Cancer, to about 

 10 N. latitude, the Philippine Archipelago with its 1,000 

 islands is a highly diversified region yielding rather 

 more kinds of product than are turned out by any other 

 tropical country. Variations in soil and climate are 

 more than ordinarily in evidence. Unfortunately, 

 however, the northern, and at times the central portion, 

 of the country is visited by the typhoons which prevail, 

 during some six months of the year, throughout the 

 central Pacific region; droughts of several months 

 duration are also prevalent in the northern and central 

 portions of the Archipelago. 



The large island of Mindanao and the adjacent Sulu 

 Archipelago, extending south-westerly from the Zam- 

 boanga Peninsula towards the north-western extremity 

 of Borneo, as well as the southern portion of Palawan 

 with the islands between it and British North Borneo, 

 comprise a more or less distinct region in which 

 typhoons seldom or never occur and in which the fairly 

 high rainfall is remarkably evenly distributed. The 

 much broken tableland, if it may be so called, of the 

 interior of Luzon, the largest island, is a subtropical 

 district in which certain temperate and subtropical crops 

 can be handled with some success. Frost, of course, 

 occurs in January, February and March, on the higher 

 reaches of the mountains in Nueva Ecija, and the sub- 

 provinces of Benguet, Lepanto, Bontoc, and Kalinga. 



Hailstorms are practically unknown, though one 

 striking case of this kind did occur in southern Luzon 

 in April, 1914. In the rainy season lightning is some- 



