THE annual report of the Malay Forest Department for the year 1939 (Govt. Press, Kuala Lumpur, Federated Malay States, 1940) is of unusual interest. A history is given of the growth of the Department from the year 1883, when the Director of Gardens, Straits Settlement, initiated a small Department. Five years later, Mr. H. N. Ridley became director and instituted a policy of Government reservation which saved valuable forests from destruction during the rubber boom of thirty years ago. As the result of a report on the forests by the late Mr. H. C. Hill of the India Forest Service, a Burma forest officer was appointed to the control. At present, the ten States of Malaya have each a Forest Department loosely united by a common and interchangeable staff of senior European officers and an ever–increasing body of Malays trained in the vernacular school of Kepong.