STUDIES IN THE VEGETATION OF THE PHILIPPINES, I. 701 



venient size best situated, so as to yield the highest profits to immediate 

 utilization. 



The forester would inject into the lumberman's view the idea of 

 increment for the sake of future yields and the possibility that the woods 

 which he now considers as valueless, may, in a readjustment of market 

 conditions, become valuable. In other words, the forester's standard of 

 success is the earning capacity of the forest as a permanent investment. 



These four views, the systematic botanist's, containing the idea of 

 variety associated (consciously or not) with bulk; the ecologist's, associat- 

 ing the idea of bulk and variety with habitat ; the lumberman's, consider- 

 ing the variety and bulk of wood necessary for his present needs; and 

 the forester's, considering the variety and bulk for present and future 

 use, are, I believe, fairly representative of the different standpoints of 

 observing men who judge forest and forest conditions. An ideal study 

 of the vegetation of a forest would be a combination of all of these in 

 which the vegetation would be arranged by habitats with the idea of 

 succession recognized and the physical and other factors measured. A 

 complete list of plants in each habitat could be obtained, the number 

 (stand) of each species could be enumerated, the volume by cubic contents 

 or weight of each plant ascertained, and the market value of each 

 merchantable kind could be estimated. 



Because of the impracticability of such a study, I propose to use bulk 

 as measured in cubic contents as the standard of comparison by which 

 success is judged in forest vegetation. By "bulk" I mean the amount of 

 vegetable tissue (mainly w^ood) that is fonned and maintained for a 

 greater or less length of time. From this standpoint the unit of area 

 (of a size large enough to be considered a "region") that produces and 

 is able to maintain for some time the greatest amount of vegetable tissue 

 per unit of surface is the most successful. I am purposely leaving out 

 of account the idea of annual increment, principally because it is im- 

 practicable at present to give any figures showing this. In a general way 

 the influence of this element of success will be used in certain conclusions 

 at the close of this paper. The measuring of the forest by weight per 

 unit of surface would perhaps be a better standard of comparison. This 

 could easily be obtained with the volume and specific gravity of each kind 

 of wood mentioned. The idea of judging by value is disregarded because 

 it would not be a stable standard of comparison. 



It is proposed to confine the discussions of the dipterocarp forests in 

 this paper to the dicotyledonous trees and after a preliminary discussion 

 on the composition of the forest with a mention of trees of all sizes, to 

 limit the studies to those trees above a certain diameter. That the 

 forest is composed of plants other than dicotyledonous trees goes without 

 saying. Most descriptions of tropical forests give, I think, undue im- 

 portance to these other elements. Thus one gains the impression that 



