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forty thousand feet, board measurement, per acre. This is perhaps a bit high, but it indicates that the forests of the Philip pines contain far above the average of hardwood timber usually found in the hardwood forests in other parts of the earth. Indeed, a good "stand" of Philippine timber will, on the average, yield

HUGE PINE SLAB Carved by the Igorrotes with bolos.

many more board feet to the acre for the lumber mills than our densest stands of pine and spruce in the United States. An average acre in the Rocky Mountain forest yields one to two thousand board feet of lumber; in the forests of the southern states three to four thousand; in the northern forests like Maine, Michigan and Wisconsin, four to six thousand. A single redwood tree of the Pacific Coast often yields as much as a hundred thousand feet of lumber as much as from twenty to forty acres of Eastern forest. While the huge hardwoods of the Philippines are not as large as the redwoods, they probably rank next in size among forests in territory of the United States.

At the present writing there are 665 native tree species now listed by the Insular Forestry Bureau. All the wood of the Philippine Islands is classified, largely according to its value, into groups, the "superior group" and the

first, second, third, fourth and fifth classes. There are 115 species of trees in the first three groups, and all the others are classified in the last groups, that is, the lower priced timber. On a "stand" of fifty square miles one will find about four hundred varieties of trees; of these varieties sixty or seventy will be of the superior groups.

Philippine hardwoods not only occur in ebonies and mahoganies, from which is made most exquisite furniture, but they possess timbers of wonderful strength for building purposes and peculiarly suited to resist the tropics. There are two kinds of hardwoods in the Islands, known roughly as construction woods and cabinet woods. Even many species of construction woods, which are used in shipbuilding and house-building, take on a brilliant polish and would be deemed adapted to decorative work in any country where hardwood is less abundant. Taking up the construction woods probably the most plentiful commercial building timber is that known as molave. In external appearance the molave resembles a huge oak, growing even larger than the greatest American oaks. In color the wood, after being sawn, is gray. markings it has something the appearance of curly maple, but it has more the texture of American oak than any other tree of the tropics. Huge molave logs are obtained which are forty inches in diameter and forty to sixty feet long. Molave weighs seventy-six pounds to the cubic foot; thus it sinks even in salt water. It is used for ship-building (and they make the strongest, finest little ships in the world in the Philippines); for posts, windows and joists of houses, and rollers in the old type of sugar mills, it is extremely valuable. In one of the old cathedrals is an immense molave beam that has stood in place for two hundred years, and is unaffected by the white ant or by water.

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This photograph shows how the giant roots of this remarkable tree begin early to extend like flanges from the base of the tree.

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often more than twenty inches in diameter. A wood something like the molave is the yacal, having a yellowish color. It is a tremendous weight carrier. The logs come seventy feet long and forty inches in diameter. The yacal is not as exceptionally hard as is the molave. One of the lighter woods in the Philippines is the mangachupay. It weighs about sixtythree pounds to the cubic foot, and though much heavier than our commercial woods in the United States, many of the mangachupay logs will float. Mangachupay is used for all ordinary house construction and planking. It makes the best sticks for ships' masts in all the Orient. An ordinary log is about sixty feet long and twenty inches in diameter.

A soft wood of the Philippines is the huge calentas or cedar. It grows everywhere, floats high out of the water, and almost all of the cigar boxes of the Orient are made of calentas. An enormous calentas timber exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition was cut not far from Dalupaon, where I am writing this article.

Among the cabinet woods is the narra, or Philippine mahogany, an immense tree found in great abundance and furnishing logs forty or more feet long and seven feet in diameter. The wood is always worth at least a dollar in American money a cubic foot, and even the branches, which are huge and straight, are sawn into logs. The roots of the narra extend in huge flanges about the base of the tree, often starting to spread outward and downward

twenty feet or more above the ground. From these great flat flanges can be cut tremendous tables eight or ten and sometimes more feet in diameter. The photograph shows flanges which are more than forty-five feet across at the base. When shown this picture, which was taken by the writer, Major Ahern of the Forestry Bureau stated it to be the largest tree he had seen or heard of. Usually a log of narra is sawed up in thin planks, a single plank being wide enough for a table or door. When the narra is cut to the heart the heart wood bleeds a vivid red juice like blood. The natives make cups of the narra, and when water is put into the cups the dry wood imparts a bluish tinge to it, and this decoction is highly thought of by the people as being good for dropsical troubles. There are two species of narra, the yellow and the red; the one having a golden-straw color and the other a blood-red surface. When rubbed with a little linseed oil or banana peel (varnish does not do well in the tropics on account of the heat) the narra sparkles and glistens like a plate-glass mirror. One can see one's face in it.

A magnificent wood is the tindalo, the tree being somewhat larger in size and even greater in specific gravity than the narra. It is "one of the most valuable jewels of the home, where it remains forever impervious to decay," says an old Spanish padre (priest). "In China formerly it sold for its weight in silver. Even now it is extremely valuable. They

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ENORMOUS HARDWOOD TREES ON THE EDGE OF A CLEARING IN NORTHERN LUZON

make from it many curious desks, chairs and stools." When first cut the tindalo is bright red, which gradually grows deeper, and in the course of years becomes a claret red. The Chinese preserve the bright red color permanently by a solution of salt water. Tindalo can be used in all kinds of construction. It is used for desks and tables, for doors, windows, rollers, and for bedsteads. It is very durable when exposed to the weather, and probably no American wood can compare with it. If care is taken to keep the wood polished, in time it becomes so lustrous that one's face can be seen in it.

A valuable wood is the Philippine ebony. In many parts of the Islands ebony is very plentiful, but the tree is small. The ebony, which is the heart of the tree, is jet black and forms only about one-third of it, the rest being whitecolored sapwood. Timbers nine feet long. and twenty inches around are obtained, and they sell by weight alone, an unusually fine specimen being worth its weight in silver in the markets of the world. In Masbate there is a wagon bridge built of solid ebony.

The heaviest of all known woods is the Philippine dungan or ironwood.

There are many fine woods in the Philippines well known to old foresters as being valuable, but which have not yet been generally introduced into the markets. Among these is the tree called dao, and not listed as yet in the government forestry books. The tree resembles a huge sycamore. The timber is dusky red.

Two gigantic trees, the timber of both of which is used for building, are the apiton tree which grows one hundred and fifty feet high, giving clear logs one hundred feet long and breast high, and the species known as the supa.

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It costs no more to lumber in the Philippines than in the United States. Take the lumbering, for instance, of the narra, which is the finest Philippine mahogany. It can be put on the beach for less than $10 per thousand feet, board measure; it costs from $4 to $6 per thousand to get it to Manila; but it sells for from $150 to $175 per thousand. The lowest grade material sells in Manila for $40 gold per thousand. In the face of this statement one is likely to ask how it is that capital, ever seeking investment, has not entered largely into the Philippine lumber field. The answer comes back two-fold. Forestry Bureau regulations at first, following out a government policy of exclusiveism, were almost prohibitive for fear of ruthless exploitation; and it is only very lately that anything approaching modern methods have been tested against the usual primitive lumbering. Any one who has seen eight or ten carabao and about twenty men struggling all day to get a log down on the beach, where the same timber could be easily handled with a donkey engine or overland cable stage, will appreciate how the industry has been handicapped. Many of the large trees close to streams or water, in districts most forested, have never been marketed because there was no way of getting them out. The natives never haul a log uphill. Sometimes it takes a whole day to chop a tree only eighteen to twenty inches in diameter with their narrow axes. So far, but little work has been done by modern methods in the Philippines. Outside of Manila, Delapaon in the Southern Peninsula of Luzon, and Santa Maria on the Island of Mindanao, and a plant in Negros, there is not a modern lumber

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plant on the Philippine Islands. course, even these mills do not compare with some of the vast sawmilling plants of the States. Of the eight steam sawmills in Manila there are only three equipped with thoroughly modern machinery, and these belong to Americans.

But the old order of things has changed; the Forestry Bureau is inviting lumbermen with capital. The Filipinos do not resent the intrusion of American capital, provided its aspirations are legitimate, but are anxious to learn modern ways and have practical object lessons. from those who know how things should be done. Engineers, surveyors, and contractors for the new railroads in the Philippines are already in the Islands and beginning work. A new era is at hand for the Philippines! In the next ten years American pioneers will educate the people of the Philippines as a whole to a greater extent, industrially, than Spain did in all her three hundred years of occupancy.

There are many millions of cubic feet in the forests of the Philippines that should be cut in order to properly thin out the dense growth; for instance, where there are three or four trees growing on a space required for one; that one so freed would put on more good wood each year than the four together. The question as to whether three hundred or three thousand trees should remain on an acre is where the real value of scientific forestry is shown. Then, too, there are many more millions of feet which reach maturity and pass on to decay, never thrilling to the woodman's axe. There are, however, very few companies in the Philippines properly equipped to handle large logs, and without master mechanics, expert gang bosses, in fact all the skilled labor required, and without a full stock of the best supply material, it would be hazardous to move the large logs which must be cut and brought to market if the forests are to be properly exploited. A good price is paid in Hong Kong for every stick of timber from the Philippines, and the American lumbermen with modern methods can solve the problem, and in so doing they will not only help to educate the adaptable Filipino as to practical things, but will insure him cash wages, something unaccustomed in Spanish days.

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