I have passed hours wandering spellbound in the forest, or gazing with eyes of wonder and delight into its silent depths. Yes, little of the poet as I have in my make-up, I, too, have been taken prisoner by a beauty and a grandeur that I found it difficult to tear myself away from. And these scenes are not merely local. Indeed, wherever one goes into the rural regions of the islands he finds the same amazing prodigality of tropic growth. There are thousands of square miles of dense forest within which the foot of the white man has rarely ever set; thousands perhaps upon which none but the natives have ever gazed; costly woods, whose value can be reckoned only in millions of dollars. Valuable herbs, medicinal plants, and hot springs abound; and the naturalist and the economic botanist alike are sadly needed to open up this luxuriant land to the world. The Promise of the Future. Under new control I expect to see, in the twentieth century, a new destiny for this noble group of islands. Whether the people be given their freedom under the protection and influence of the United States, or the islands become a direct appanage of that or of some other enterprising nation of the West, a turn in the tide of Philippine affairs can hardly fail to set in, and the possibilities of the land be developed to an extent undreamed of under the effete rule of Spain. I expect to see an invasion of this island-realm by three classes of modern enterprise. The scientist is sure to find his way there, and tell the world of the new and the strange in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. With him will come the engineer, opening up roads right and left, laying a network of iron rails, where now only the buffalo-cart drags along, introducing the latest machinery for mining and farming-industries, and starting a hum of activity in every quarter of the long-slumbering land. With these also will enter the practical economist, in search, not of the new, but of the useful, prospecting the forests for plants of economic value, seeking for new mines of coal and iron, tracing the gold placer-beds up to their mother-veins, seeking everywhere for what the Philippines have to add to the useful productions of the world. These will be the twentieth century pioneers of this promising Archipelago, the results of their labors being exploited by the merchant and the manufacturer. The seas shall teem with ships carrying the products of the islands to foreign shores, and bringing back full cargoes to supply the demands of the islanders, commerce steadily growing in amount as civilization awakens the natives to the perception of new wants.