142 ANNUAL REPORT. 
CONGRESSIONAL TREE PLANTING ACT OF MARCH, 1874. 
An Act to amend the act, entitled: “‘An act to Encourage the 
Growth of Timber on Western Prairies,” approved March 3, 1873, 
be, and the same is hereby amended so as to read as follows: That 
any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the 
age of twenty-one years, and who is a citizen of the United States, 
or who shall have filed his delaration and intention to become such, 
as required by the naturalization laws of the United States, who 
shall plant, protect, and keep in a healthy growing condition for 
eight years, forty acres of timber, the trees thereon being not more 
than twelve feet apart each way, on any quarter section of any of 
the public lands of the United States, or twenty acres on any legal 
subdivision of eighty acres, or ten acres on any legal subdivision 
of forty acres, or one-fourth part of any fractional subdivision of 
land less than forty acres, shall be entitled to a patent for the whole 
of said quarter-section, or of such legal subdivision of eighty or forty 
acres, or fractional subdivision of less than forty acres, as the case 
may be, at the expiration of said eight years, on making proof of 
such fact by not less than two credible witnesses ; Provided, That not 
more than one-quarter of any section shall be thus granted; and 
that no person shall make more than one entry under the provisions 
of this act, unless fractional subdivisions of less than forty acres 
are entered, which, in the aggregate, shall not exceed one quarter 
section. 
SECTION TWO. 
That the person applying for the benefit of this act shall, upon 
application to the register of the land district in which he or she 
is about to make such entry, make affidavit before the register 
or the receiver, or some ofticer authorized to administer oaths in the 
district where the land is situated, who is required by law to use an 
official seal, that such entry is made for the cultivation of timber ; 
and upon filing said affidavit with said register and said receiver, 
and the payment of $10, he or she shall thereupon be permitted to 
enter the quantity of land specified ; and the party making an entry 
of a quarter section under the provisions of this act, shall be re- 
quired to break ten acres of the land covered thereby the first year, 
ten acres the second year, and twenty acres the third year, after the 
date of entry, and to plant ten acres'of timber the seeond year, ten 
acres the third year, and twenty acres the fourth year after date of 
entry. A party making an entry of eighty acres shall break and 
plant, at the times hereinbefore prescribed, one-half of the quantity 
required of a party who enters’ a quarter section ; and a party enter- 
