The public forests of the Philippines are not sold, but are developed under a license system. Small operators usually work under ordinary yearly licenses for definite small areas. Exclusive licenses, or concessions as they are popularly called, are generally in the form of twenty-year exclusive licenses to cut and remove timber and other forest products from certain specified tracts. The land itself is in no way affected by such licenses. Merely the timber and minor forest products are included. When a lumberman is seriously considering an investment in the Philippines, he himself, or an experienced representative, should state to the director of forestry approximately the extent of the investment he contemplates. He will then be given information about several tracts which promise to answer his needs, and arrangements can be made for an experienced forester to accompany him over the tracts in question so that he may size up conditions for himself. All maps, estimates and other detailed information which may have been collected on the tracts will, of course, be placed at his disposal, and he can count upon the heartiest governmental coöperation and assistance in making a success of his enterprise. It should be understood, however, that in no case does the director of forestry guarantee the correctness of the estimates or other data which he furnishes. These are given to the applicant for what they are worth, and in every case he is advised to take such steps as may be necessary to satisfy himself as to whether or not they are correct. If the lumberman then decides to apply for a concession, he makes a formal application in writing to the director of forestry for an exclusive twenty-year privilege for the tract he has selected. His application is then forwarded by the director of forestry with recommendations to the secretary of the interior, who may approve the issuance of an exclusive license if he decides that such a course is in the public interest. For an area of more than a thousand hectares (approximately twenty-five hundred acres) proposals for bids to secure the desired privilege are published in the Official Gazette and other papers. At least six weeks intervene between the appearance of the first advertisement and the opening of the bids, but in order to give interested parties in the Philippines ample time to correspond with their principals in Europe or America, this period is usually extended to about four months. The advertisement also enumerates certain minimum requirements which principally specify the minimum amount of capital which must be invested within a certain given time and the minimum cut during the several succeeding years, together with certain requirements regarding logging and milling equipment.