Diaries of F. W. Foxworthy: Malaysia's First Forest Research Officer ed. by F. S. P. Ng (review)

Fred William Foxworthy (1878–1950) was a distinguished American forester who was recruited in January 1918 as the first Forest Research Officer in what was then British Malaya. Originally appointed for two years, Foxworthy so enjoyed his job that he stayed on till 1932. This volume under review consists of his office diaries from 11 January 1918 to 31 December 1925. Unfortunately, the second diary, covering his later years in the post, has not been located.

However, this volume provides a cornucopia of insights not only into the state of forestry in the Malay Peninsula, but also into other aspects of life at the time.

Before his appointment to Malaya, Foxworthy had served since 1905 in forestry-associated appointments in the Philippines. He had moreover spent five months' leave in 1915–16 in British North Borneo doing forestry consultancy work. He therefore arrived in Kuala Lumpur with some extensive experience of Southeast Asian forestry. G. E. S. Cubitt, then Conservator of Forests of British Malaya, to whom he was answerable, was well pleased with the appointment. It represented a welcome commitment by the British Malaya administration to the care of the forests.

As the diaries reveal, Foxworthy was a man of considerable energy. He spent much of his time on field expeditions to different parts of the Peninsula to review and enumerate the forest resources. In this work he also visited local Chinese logging and milling operations, frequently commenting unfavourably on the standards and efficiency of the work he observed.

During his forays into the different reserves and forest areas, he made detailed notes of the species he observed and the quality of the trees. Unfortunately, in many cases he simply used generic Malay names, such as keruing, so it is not always obvious which species he was referring to. On the other hand, it must be borne in mind that up until Symington's classic Malayan Dipterocarps, published during the Japanese occupation, and Corner's Wayside Trees the taxonomy of Malayan trees was in some considerable disarray. Thus at one stage he refers to belian, an exclusively Bornean species, as occurring wild in the Peninsula. It is not clear what species he was referring to. Throughout his field expeditions, considerable care was taken to collect flowering and fruiting specimens for eventual identification, in cases of doubt, in Singapore. He made frequent visits there for this purpose.

In the course of his official account of his work, a number of well-known names appear albeit fleetingly: botanists Henderson, Holttum, and Sir Richard Winstedt on the academic side.

Perhaps Foxworthy's most important achievement was to locate Kepong as the site for the Forest Research Institute. He justified his choice in the diary entry of 1 October 1921. The land was eventually acquired from the Selangor State Government in 1925. Unfortunately, in the absence of the second volume, we have none of his comments on the design and construction of the buildings.

The existing diary covers his visit to India in 1920 and, perhaps more significantly, a posting to Kelantan from 31 January to 6 April 1924. This was in connection with the Duff Development Corporation case. He left almost immediately to London, where he gave evidence in the court case, using the diaries from his Kelantan stint. These, unfortunately, are no longer available, and comments during his London visit are confined to brief entries noting the days on which he gave evidence.

Much of the content of the diary in 1923–4 concerned the Malayan Forestry contribution to the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley. This involved the shipping to London of considerable tonnages of sample planks and forest produce: rattan, gutta percha and different resins. During his London visit, he dropped by at Wembley on several occasions, commenting on the standards of exhibition of the forestry departments and other countries represented.

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