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 studv 
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 n um ber 
(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 wood) that is formed 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 
