190 North American Forests and Forestry 



possession is now the " quarter-section," or one 

 hundred and sixty acres. When large portions of 

 the public domain were granted in aid of railroad 

 building, still the same object was sought to be 

 attained by giving to the beneficiaries of these 

 grants alternate sections only. In pursuing this 

 policy the government took it for granted that 

 persons taking up public lands did so for the 

 purpose of establishing farms thereon. Not un- 

 til the dividing up of the government lands 

 reached the arid and mountainous regions of the 

 far West did it become evident that all of the 

 public domain could not be treated in the same 

 manner. Then a distinction was made between 

 agricultural, mineral, and desert lands, and the last 

 two classes were subjected to different rules from 

 the first. 



The settlement of the older western States had 

 in the meantime progressed rapidly. In the east- 

 ern half of this section, within the forest zone 

 proper and overlapping on the intermediate or 

 wooded-prairie zone, there were large tracts which 

 we may, for brevity's sake, call the " pine barrens," 

 although not all of it is barren, nor was all of it 

 ever covered with pine. These tracts, some of 

 them very extensive, were really little adapted to ag- 

 riculture, being mostly sandy or so hilly and broken 

 that farming is rendered difficult. They are the 

 natural forest reserves of the middle western coun- 

 try, and here it was and is that most of the 

 lumbering operations of the Northwest were and 



