THE YELLOWSTONE NATIONAL PARK. 69 
we may confidently hope to add to our banner another star repre- 
senting a part of this region. The Montana mining settlements 
are already a fixed fact, and the inhabitants of the whole area al- 
luded to, ever alive to their own interests, are rapidly developing 
the capacities of their soil. Dr. Cyrus Thomas, in his valuable 
and very interesting report to Dr. Hayden in 1871, says* “ It is 
only after a careful examination of a vast number of experiments 
made in New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, ete., that I am 
forced to acknowledge what I before did not believe, viz: that 
wherever there is soil in these regions, it is rich in the primary ele- 
ments of fertility.’ Again he remarks,} “As a final illustration, 
I would refer to the efforts of the Mormons on the Rio Virgin, 
along the Arizonian border, where I might truly say, amid basaltic 
hills and drifting sands the desert is being turned into a blooming 
garden. Perhaps amore desolate looking region than the vicin- 
ity of St. George could scarcely have been selected ; yet the ap- 
plication of water shows that here, as elsewhere, the soil is rich in 
the mineral elements necessary to fertility.” 
Much of the area to which I have referred requires no irrigation, 
while the greater portion of the remainder is very favorably situ- 
ated for the easy application of water. On the plains at some dis- 
tance from the mountains this process will be much more difficult 
on many accounts, and yet I do not doubt that even in such situ- 
ations it will be attended with success when systematically prac- 
tised.t é 
I have thus seemingly digressed from my subject in order to 
show that the reservation of 3,600 square miles of that portion 
_ of this area embracing its most remarkable features was well timed, 
in consideration of the destructive tendencies of civilization. 
The following are extracts from the report of the Committee on 
the Public Lands, concerning the bill providing for this reser- 
vation: ‘Persons are now waiting for the spring to open to en- 
ter in and take possession of these remarkable curiosities ; to make 
merchandise of these beautiful specimens; to fence in these rare 
: * Geological Survey of Wyoming and contiguous territory, 1870, p. 194. Washing- 
TI take pleasure te pari the reader to the valuable on of Dr. Thoria, wide 
have been published with those f irrigation is 
fally discussed. 
