600 
acres. Others made much lower estimates. Governor Elbert claimed 
that Colorado alone has a water-supply for irrigating 6,000,000 acres—an 
area equal to that which in the days of the Ptolemies, in Egypt, supplied 
food for a population of 8,000,000. 
The convention ubanimously recognized the necessity for aid by the 
National Government, as the only authority having jurisdiction and ¢ca- 
pable of giving unity and efficiency to a system permeating several 
States and Territories, and as the principal landholder and party to be 
benefited. 
The convention, after deliberating two days, in extended day and 
night sessions, adopted unanimously a memorial to Congress, reciting 
that the arid region of the United States, embracing over one-third of 
the area of the country, or more than one million square miles, in the 
Territories of New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Idaho, 
and Montana, the State of Nevada, and large portions of the States of 
Oregon, California, Nebraska, Kansas, and Texas, and of the Territories 
of Washington and Vakota, is generally unfit for profitable cultivation 
without irrigation; that the water supply is abundant for reclaiming 
millions of acres; that a system of irrigation suited to the wants of this 
region is too expensive for individuals, associations, or Territorial or 
State governments; that vast areas of land must long remain unsold 
and unavailable for agriculture without such a system of internal im- 
provement; that the small areas available for settlement by present 
means of irrigation are now nearly exhausted; that such a system might 
be incidentally useful in driving the machinery of thousands of gold and 
silver mines now unworked for lack of water; and, therefore, praying 
for the passage of a law embodying the following general provisions : 
First. To grant to the several States and Territories named in the preamble to this 
memorial one-half of all the arid lands not mineral within their borders, said lands, or 
the proceeds thereof, to be devoted to the construction of irrigating canals and reser- 
voirs for the reclamation of said arid and waste lands. : 
Second. That the construction and maintenance of irrigating canals and reservoirs 
shall be under the exclusive control and direction of the Territory or State, as sole 
owner thereof, under such laws, rules, and regulations as the legislature thereof shall 
from time to time provide. 
Third. That the Territorial and State legislatures shall have power to make all need- 
ful rules and regulations, and take all needful steps for the proper construction and 
maintenance of such canals, and that such power shall include the power to provide, 
by laws for the issuing of the bonds of the Territory or State, for the construction of 
such canals. 
Fourth. That the proceeds of said lands herein granted shall be kept as an exclusive 
fund by the Territory or State, first, for the payment of the principal and interest of 
all bonds so issued as aforesaid ; second, that any balance remaining after the payment 
of the bonds so issued as aforesaid shall be used in the maintenance of said canals, or 
the construction of other canals, as the legislature of said Territory or State shall from 
time to time by law direct. 
Fifth. That any lands within said Territory or State which shall be filed on under 
the provisions of the pre-emption and homestead laws of the United States, after the 
passage of this act, shall be subject to the operation of this act, if the said lands shall 
be brought under irrigation by the construction of said canals. 
Sixth. That the bonds so donated to the several States and Territories herein named, 
and the remainder of the public domain therein belonging to the General Government, 
shall be disposed of under revised and more strict pre-emption and homestead laws 
than are now in force, and that no title shall issue until the claimant shall be a bona- 
fide actual settler upon the land claimed. 
MANUFACTURE OF PAPER FROM HOP-STALKS.—M. Jourdeil, of the 
department of the Céte d’Or, in France, has recently submitted to a 
congress of paper-makers of that country an invention, or rather a 
series of inventions, for separating and using the textile material which 
envelops the stalk of the hop, in the manufacture of paper. The experi- 
ments with this new fiber have already reached some remarkable results, 
