28 LANDS OF THE ARID REGION OF THE UNITED STATES. 
panies desiring to engage in the lumber or wood business, and in such 
quantities as may be necessary to encourage the construction of mills, the 
erection of flumes, the making of roads, and other improvements necessary 
to the utilization of the timber for the industries of the country. 
PASTURAGE LANDS. 
If divisional surveys were extended over the pasturage lands, favorable 
sites at springs and along small streams would be rapidly taken under the 
homestead and preémption privileges for the nuclei of pasturage farms. 
Unentered lands contiguous to such ‘pasturage farms could be con- 
trolled to a greater or less extent by those holding the water, and in this 
manner the pasturage of the country would be rendered practicable. But 
the great body of land would remain in the possession of the Government; 
the farmers owning the favorable spots could not obtain possession of the 
adjacent lands by homestead or preémption methods, and if such adjacent 
lands were offered for sale, they could not afford to pay the Government 
price. 
Certain important facts relating to the pasturage farms may be advan- 
tageously restated. 
The farm unit should not be less than 2,560 acres; the pasturage farms 
need small bodies of irrigable land; the division of these lands should be 
controlled by topographie features to give water fronts; residences of the 
pasturage lands should be grouped; the pasturage farms cannot be fenced— 
they must be occupied in common. 
The homestead and preémption methods are inadequate to meet these 
conditions. A general law should be enacted to provide for, the organiza- 
tion of pasturage districts, in which the residents should have the right to 
make their own regulations for the division of the lands, the use of the 
water for irrigation and for watering the stock, and for the pasturage of the 
lands in common or in severalty. But each division or pasturage farm of 
the district should be owned by an individual; that is, these lands could be 
settled and improved by the “colony” plan better than by any other. It 
should not be understood that the colony system applies only to such per- 
sons as migrate from the east in a body; any number of persons already 
