Commonwealth Forestry Review

AROUND THE COMMONWEALTH 27
equations as graph-plus-scatter diagrams, to supplement the traditional tables. The
same worker also re-designed the polyspecific sample-plot program in FORTRAN,
so as to make this facility more widely available. It was put to immediate use for
Sarawak swamp forests where some 20 plots await analysis. On average, the section
processes about 20 "runs" on the computer per day, the average job (e.g. volume tables
for a single species) taking perhaps five "runs" to complete.
B. T. Styles as Forest Botanist has continued to advise the Institute's Fast Growing
Tropical Timber Section on the more fundamental botanical aspects of its work, that
is mainly the distribution, systematics and nomenclature of tropical pines and broadleaved
trees. As a contribution towards helping in tree-breeding he is co-operating
\vith the Silviculturist in charge of Tree Improvement in Nigeria (formerly in Ghana)
to study phenology and the biology of flowers and fruits of Triplochiton, Terminalia
and Cedrela and other species of Meliaceae. Styles has continued his study of
chromosome cytology in important timber species of Meliaceae and his many new
observations have been incorporated in a review of existing knowledge. At the request
of the V.S. Forest Service he has begun to investigate the morphological and cytological
variations of the three species of Swietenia and the putative hybrid between
s. macrophylla and S. mahagoni. This hybrid is being more and more frequently
lnentioned in the literature, but adequate botanical evidence is still lacking.
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