growth of oranges and other citrus fruits, that the rapid development and large production of these most valuable crops are matters fairly beyond the experimental stage, requiring nothing more than the importation of selected varieties in sufficient quantities for their rapid propagation and wide dissemination.

Forest products deserve an entire book, not to say a portion of one chapter. These are not surpassed in any part of the tropics. Bamboo, with its almost endless uses in building, fencing, rafting, shipping, and in every branch of trade, holds the position among forest products that the banana holds among fruits. It serves more useful purposes, and is really worth more to the Filipino, than any other growth of the forest kind. Bejuco, or native rattan, is also eminently useful. It takes the place of rope, and nails, and screws, and bolts. All native houses are held together by bejuco. Rafts are lashed together with it. Hemp bales go to their destinations in the ends of the earth clasped firmly by this native

rattan.

In the line of hard woods, the Islands are remarkably rich. Altogether more than seventy kinds are well known, which give an excellent polish, and more than a dozen which rank with the best mahogany. Several of the finest woods have been discovered since the American occupation. A list of these trees would fill pages. Among the timbers most in demand for export is narrà, or a kind of mahogany, either white or deep blood-red. It can be had in logs squared to twenty-six inches and up to thirty-five feet in length. It polishes well, and is extensively used for inside finishings in the best class of houses, for furniture, and for ornamental work of any kind. It can be had in very great diameters. Tables will be exhibited at the St. Louis Exposition, the tops

daily with the juicy stems of fresh banana-leaves rubbed hard over the surface, these make as attractive a floor as can be found in the world. Nothing in the salons of Europe equals the finish of some floors of molave that can be seen in Manila. Some time its merits will be known in the United States, and then, instead of commanding a price of $140 per thousand as at present, it will take rank with its more aristocratic neighbor, mahogany, and command $500 per thousand.

Supa, Tindalo and other varieties are exported to America for finishing woods in sleeping and parlor cars, and in the homes of the rich. Several large steam-mills, with full outfits of bandsaws and planes, have been set up in Manila to work these woods, and place them upon the markets of the world. Up to the present the hopes of the investors have not been fully realized. The woods are in the forest. But there are three difficulties in the way of getting them to the mills. First, the difficulty of securing labor-a difficulty that confronts every form of industry in the Philippines. Second, transportation is hard to manage. Where trees grow within easy reach of shore-lines, boats can approach and load, by means of cranes or booms of long arms, that have been rolled into the sea or river. But when the tree is away in the interior, there it must remain. Roads do not exist. Third, the Forestry Bureau, excellent as is its work in preserving and caring for the millions of acres of government forests, has hedged the cutting of timber about with restrictions, and established rates of taxes, that make the lot of the timber merchant a hard one. Only a certain number of licenses to cut can be issued in a given province. Whether that license is for one or twenty men seems to make no difference. Stumpage is reckoned by the cubic foot of the squared log, and

the theorists and politicians in America know all about conditions they never saw, and they decide against such a proposal in the supposed interest of an eager Filipino. laborer who has no existence outside of their imaginations. The forest products of the Philippines will be one of her richest resources; but American legislation and the regulations of the Bureau in the Philippines must be altered so as to make their development a possibility.

India-rubber of a low grade is extracted from trees that grow wild in Mindanao. Cultivated rubber needs a more evenly-distributed rainfall than is enjoyed in parts of Luzon and the other larger islands. The government is spending money freely to grow the Central American rubber known as Castilao elastica. It is believed that it will be wholly impossible to succeed in growing standard or Para rubber (Hevia Braziliensis) on account of lack of proper soil and moisture. Flourishing young plants of the Central American variety can be seen at the Singalon experiment farm, but seven years are needed before a yield of rubber can be expected. If the tree should find Philippine conditions congenial, there are untold millions to be made in its cultivation.

Coal, gold, iron, copper,-these are the four minerals known to exist in the Philippines.

The coal so far discovered is not of a good quality. But recent investigations in a province but a few miles from Manila-Bataan-show better qualities at lower levels. The Mining Bureau has issued a report on "The Coal Measures of the Philippines," which is replete with information as to the petty efforts made under Spanish rule to develop this industry, and as to the possibilities of making coal-mining a practical matter here. The outlook is not as encouraging as we might wish. Cebu has coal. Luzon has coal. But it is "young," and does