34 FORESTRY OF THE MISSISSIPPI VALLEY. 
twelve feet. Young trees need each other’s support. Close planting is 
the law of nature, and nurserymen are more and more coming to ree- 
ognize it, west of the Missouri at least. Taking the ground that the 
object of the law is to have the ground covered with live trees and not 
dead ones, the greatest distance allowed between trees at planting 
should be four feet. If the trees when growing become too thick they 
will be trimmed out by nature herself. 
TIMBER ON HOMESTEADS. 
The power of the government over public lands is absolute. It can, 
in conveying them, impose any regulation not in hostility to the ‘ gen- 
eral plan of granting the public domain to actual settlers under reason- 
able conditions.” In addition to the actual occupaney for five years 
now required, the homesteader might with profit to himself and advan- 
tage to the country be required to plant and maintain during the five 
years one acre in forest trees, or set a row of trees along the highway, 
or both. 
WHAT STATES MAY DO. 
Except in Texas, where the State owns all the public land, the States 
own nothing but the school lands and lands granted for educational 
purposes. The power of the States over them is absolute, and in their 
sale the condition might be imposed on the purchaser that a certain 
portion of the land shall be kept in forest. The legislatures of the seyv- 
eral States may take action making it obligatory on school directors to 
maintain trees on school-house “pipRUNaS: and also making it compulsory 
on land owners to keep trees growing alovg the country roads, 
DUTY OF RAILROAD COMPANIES. 
The duty and the interest of the great land-grant railroad corpora- 
tions lie in the direction of the encouragement of forestry. Next to 
the general government, these companies are the greatest land owners 
on this continent. They have received from the government and mu- 
nicipalities, from the people, in short, an imperial gift, the source of im- 
measurable wealth, and this has been given them almost without con- 
ditions. Itis but just that they should in return do everything possible 
toward the improvement of the country their lines traverse; and it is 
also their interest to do so, since whatever increases the productive- 
ness of the country increases their own business. These corporations, 
with their great and hourly increasing wealth, can do what individuals 
cannot do, and on them devolves the inauguration of the plan of plant- 
ing great forests—not little experimental gardens, not a few trees in 
the depot grounds, but tracts sueh as are found in Europe of tens of 
thousands of acres. It is estimated that every year 275,000 acres are 
stripped in this country to furnish railroad ties, and the process of resto- 
ration must keep pace with that of destruction, else the time will come 
4 
