AGRICULTURAL BULLETIN 
OF THE 
STRAITS 
AND 
FEDERATED MALAY STATES. 
No. i.] OCTOBER, 1901. [VOL. I. 
THE TIMBERS OF THE MALAY PENINSULA, 
Introduction, 
When one looks over any large tract of country in the Malay 
Peninsula, especially from a height, and sees an apparently endless 
vista of forest, it is natural to suppose that the supply of wood 
suitable for all purposes is quite inexhaustible, but a more careful 
investigation into the contents of the forests themselves and an 
inspection of the timber in the yards of the sawmills shows very 
clearly that the supply of first class timber for house and boat 
building, bridges and such purposes is not only not inexhaustible 
but is rapidly diminishing. 
It is true that a large area of the interior of the Peninsula is 
not as yet accessible, the rivers being, as a rule, in forest regions, 
too small for floating timber down. While there is as yet but 
little of the country opened up by rail and the transport by such 
roads, as there are, is too expensive for full use to be made of the 
timber. \ he configuration of the country where so much of the 
land consists of a succession of hills with deep valleys between, 
makes it more difficult to get the timber out of the forest. This, 
however, is not usually insuperable, and probably in time most of 
the timber will be made accessible by slides, buffalo tracks, &c. 
In many forests, however, where there has been a certain amount 
of timber-cutting, one often finds that to see what big trees are in 
the jungle one has to go for some distance from the paths, as all 
good timbers that were accessible are naturally removed first, 
while even exceptionally good timber tree on slopes facing away 
from the track, oven though but a short distance away, are un- 
touched on account of the difficulty of extraction. Malay forests 
are almost invariably mixed forests. The most valuable timbers 
are scattered here and there among a vast quantity of inferior 
and mostly valueless woods. It is common to find forests consist- 
ing almost entirely of large trees of little value with only young 
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