20 CLASSIFICATION OF THE PUBLIC LANDS. 



The other (36 Stat.j 855) provides— 



That the Secretary of the Interior be, and he is hereby, authorized. In Ms 

 discretion, to reserve from location, entry, sale, allotment, or other appropria- 

 tion any lands within any Indian reservation, valuable for power or reservoir 

 sites, or which may be necessary for use in connection with any irrigation 

 project heretofore or hereafter to be authorized by Congress. 



Thus the plain iatention of Congress that the public lands shall 

 be classified and that they shall be disposed of in accordance with 

 their classification is shown by definite provisions for the classification 

 of certain areas, by the authorization of land withdrawals, and by 

 the creation of an organization — ^the Geological Survey — among 

 whose prescribed duties the classification of the public lands is spe- 

 cifically stated. But were there none of these evidences the fact that 

 Congress has consistently recognized the necessity for the classifica- 

 tion of public lands would be established beyond question by a study 

 of the land laws, which, as the following brief outline will show, 

 could not be administered without some sort of segregation into 

 classes. This outline does not purport to set forth in detail all the 

 laws under which disposition is made of the public lands; it only 

 sketches the principal features of the more important laws. 



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LAND LAWS. 

 GENERAL DIVISIONS. 



The land laws of the United States may be divided into two dis- 

 tinct classes — ^public-land laws and land grants. The first are general 

 laws providing for the disposition of lands to any duly qualified 

 person who may wish to avail himself of the prescribed conditions; 

 the second are special laws granting certain areas to specified indi- 

 viduals, corporations, or State governments. The laws of each of 

 these two classes may in turn be subdivided, the public-land laws 

 falling loosely under the headings of agricultural, mineral, and coal 

 land laws and laws relating to public and quasi-public uses, whereas 

 land grants may be divided into grants made to States and grants 

 made to railroads. 



PUBLIC-LAND LAWS. 

 AGmOTTLTXTRAIi-I/ANI) LAWS. 



Purpose.— hi general, the purpose of the laws relating to agri- 

 cultural land is to promote the settlement of the public domain. 

 The principal acts are those providing for homesteads, forest home- 

 steads, enlarged homesteads, desert-land entries, entries under the 

 reclamation act, the sale of isolated tracts, and timber and stone 

 entries. Every tract of land to which these laws are applied must 

 be nonmineral in character. 



