318 AGRICULTUEAL REPORT. 



and exposure if these views are correct. The first question is to inquire 

 whether any agencies in our power to control can be employed to re- 

 store what is wanting-, and to protect what we still have from further 

 destruction. An act ior the restoration and preservation of forest-trees 

 is the first and most effective step that is suggested. The power of the 

 General Government can to a great extent control the conditions uuder 

 which the laeds may be taken up, and this power, directed wisely, will 

 not be to the prejudice or injury of any class of occupants of the soil. 

 The existing diniculties of climate and surface are their greatest obsta- 

 cle, and if general improvements are practicable through prompt legis- 

 lation and united efforts, the first to receive the benefits will be the set- 

 tlers themselves. In these views, a bill prepared by the honorable Com- 

 missioner of Agriculture, in 1873, (H. K. No. 3008, second session Forty- 

 second Congress,) provided effectual guarantees, first, for the preser- 

 vation of existing timber 5 second, for the planting of a certain propor- 

 tion of all lands sold or granted on which such proportion does not 

 naturally exist 5 and third, the general planting of tracts of unsold lands, 

 in the least protected districts, by the direct agency of the General Gov- 

 ernment. And to afford settlers and occupants special inducements to 

 such planting, lands to the extent of a quarter section would be given 

 to a settler who should plant and cultivate so much in forest for five 

 years. 



That all these powers and requirements are within the authority of 

 the General Government to exercise and enforce, cannot be doubted if 

 the exigency is so general and important as to demand them as a con- 

 dition of successful occupancy of the soil itself. The lands of the plains 

 generally certainly cannot be sold to realize any revenue to the Govern- 

 ment without some such provision. If granted or conveyed without 

 sale, it is doubtful whether they can be occupied, and thus the primary 

 duty of providing for their safe occupancy fails to bo discharged by the 

 Government. 



Undoubtedly the first amoug the questions to be considered is the 

 possibility of the improvement and the ameliorations proposed to be 

 effected. If tree-planting is itself impossible, or if no practical ame- 

 lioration of soil or climate results from it, the exercise of compulsory 

 powers would at least be of doubtful propriety. For these reasons it is 

 proposed here to treat the question apart from any doubtful or disputed 

 propositions on this general subject, and to consider fairly whether por- 

 tions which admit of no doubt, and are not open to question anywhere, 

 do not fully sustain the general principles of the measure proi)osed in 

 the Commissioner's bill. 



The mutual relations of surface to climate cannot be disputed, and 

 they must be considered fairly in any discussion of the modes of restor- 

 ing better local conditions, or of averting further deterioration. The 

 greatest of all agencies for the retention of water on the surface, wher- 

 ever falling, for promoting its absorption and penetration of the soil, 

 and for rediftusing its vapor in the atmosphere, is what we designate 

 as the native forest. Forests are, in nature, the growth of centuries 

 under conditions generally favorable ; and they resist, for periods 

 equally long, the action of even unfavorable conditions. When de- 

 stroyed, they are not readily restored through natural agencies, and the 

 denuded surface changes materially in the direction of aridity, and in 

 the waste of nutritive elements in the soil. And the destructive power 

 of extreme seasons of drought, of fire, and of special acts of man, in a 

 savage as well as in a civilized state, is such that no conclusion adverse 

 to the possibility of forest-growth can be drawn from the absence ot 

 such growth on any part of the plains yet explored. 



