DEFECTS IN TIMBER-CULTURE ACT OF 1873-'74. 21 



In one of the land districts of Colorado the Register suggests that the 

 amount to be planted under the timber-culture act should be reduced 

 one- half. 



In a district in Minnesota it was suggested that the area of entries 

 should be reduced to 40 acres, or the smallest legal subdivision, and that 

 the restriction should be removed as to the number of entries in any one 

 section. The person making the entry should be required to break ten 

 acres within one year from date of entry, and to plant with trees two 

 acres within three years, three acres within four years, and five acres 

 within five years, the trees to be kept in a good growing condition until 

 ten years from date of entry. 



The Register of a district in Minnesota suggests the three following 

 amendments as desirable, according to his observation : 



1st. A reduction in the number of acres to be planted from one-fourth to one-eighth 

 of the area entered, with the same number of trees thereon as is now required by the 

 act of 1874. Experience has demonstrated that timber, to be grown successfully, should 

 be planted closer than 12 feet apart. The reduction in the acreage to be broken and 

 cultivated would enable the settler to make a much more thorough cultivation of his 

 timber, resulting in a correspondingly increased growth. 



2d. I would suggest a modification of the fees and commissions paid in timber- 

 culture entries, to correspond with the fees and commissions paid for homestead en- 

 tries of like area and cash valuation. There is neither justice nor equity in requiring 

 one man to pay the same fees for the entry of 40 acres of land held at $1.25 per acre 

 that are exacted from another who enters 160 acres of $2S)0 per acre land. 



'M. Allow a settler who has complied with the requirements of the law by planting 

 the full amount of timber, and keeping the same in good condition for two years, to com- 

 mute his entry by making cash payment therefor, if he elects to do so, instead of 

 waiting eight years to receive his deed. 



An observer living in a prairie region of Minnesota, where planting 

 is a first necessity, remarks that the timber-culture act requires too 

 much from the party complying with its provisions. The breaking of 

 ten acres of tough prairie sod the first season, so that it would be fit to 

 plant the second, then plowing another ten besides setting the first, 

 would cost at least $1,000 to start on ; and before the title was secured, 

 much more. In the mean time he must earn food for himself and 

 family. He thinks that five acres a year, and twenty acres to the 

 quarter-section, is all that should be required. 



A practical planter of large experience in Wisconsin suggests that a 

 limitation should be placed upon the cultivation of trees under the 

 timber-culture act, so that not over one-fourth or one-third should be 

 Cottonwood; the remainder being of the more valuable kinds; such as 

 the ash, Scotch white, Austrian pitch, and red pines, sugar-maple, 

 black walnut, European larch, black cherry, hickory, &c. The effect 

 would be to give to the country a more valuable growth, and thus tend 

 to greater benefits. He also suggests that on hilly and broken surfaces 

 of the public domain the planting be restricted to groups, and on level 

 land to belts, upon the four sides of each 160 acres; also that a row four 

 rods wide be reserved on all section lines. 



A suggestion has been made by an intelligent correspondent in Wyo- 

 ming Territory, in reference to the operation of this act, that deserves 

 attention. He remarks that in that Territory nothing will grow without 

 irrigation, and a person cannot get water out of a creek valley without 

 going to expenditures far beyond the means of a poor settler. He is, 

 therefore, forced to plant the trees in the valley along the creek, where 

 they can be irrigated. But as these valleys are generally not more than 

 a quarter of a mile wide, and as his lot must be square, if he gets a piece 

 of land with a valley across the middle, a part will lie on the bluifs and 

 be worthless. By the time he gets 40 acres of trees planted on laud near 



