cultivation than was first supposed, but that such land possesses within itself a constant recuperative power. Instances are numerous where lands have been cultivated for fifteen years and yet show no signs of deterioration, and some farmers claim that their lands have improved in productiveness during that time, although no artificial fertilizers have been applied to them. This may be due, in part, to the fact that such land contains a superabundance of silicas and alumina, and that through the process of evaporation there is annually brought to the surface a proportion of the salts, alkalies, nitrates and phosphates that lie stored in inexhaustible deposits far below the surface and produce such conditions of the soil as to render it prolific of vegetation.

The best evidence of this fact is shown in the wonderful growth of alfalfa, which crop, instead of diminishing, seems to increase in abundance year by year. The selection of farm lands is now better understood, as the light of experience has shown where the earlier settlers were at fault.

At first the rancher confined himself to the natural meadows of the well-watered valleys, and was slow to discover that in the adjoining sagebrush desert a more prolific soil might be found, which, by irrigation, would produce abundant crops of grain and vegetables. So the sagebrush of the desert is slowly and surely disappearing, to be superseded by large areas of grain, alfalfa, and vegetables.

As nearly all the available waters of the State have been appropriated, there are many places where reservoirs may be constructed and artesian wells driven that will afford water enough to irrigate hundreds of thousands of acres of these desert wastes, and the time is rapidly approaching for their irrigation under the many reclamation projects now being formed for that purpose. Ordinarily our population increases slowly. Give us a steady, industrious people, who will be content to labor and improve farms, and Nevada may claim honors as an agricultural State that all New England could never hope to attain. Our mining camps may become depopulated, our mines depleted of their wealth, but when you implant a family upon 80 or 160 acres of improved land, they are there to stay and to become the bone and sinew of this great Commonwealth.

RECLAMATION OF ARID LANDS

There is no industrial question of greater importance, or which demands the attention of the people of this State more, than the subject of irrigation and the reclamation and settlement of our arid lands. Upon the control and economic application of the waters to the soil depend the growth and future prosperity of the State.

This is a question that has commanded the attention of our citizens since Nevada became a State.

There are millions of acres of lands in Nevada, which can only be made available for agicultural purposes by conserving the waters of the rivers and streams which rise in the mountains and are fed during the summer season by the melting snows which accumulate during the winter months.

These streams are swollen during the spring and early summer, and the waters find their way to the sinks or lakes in the lowest valleys, where they evaporate during the dry season. To store these watere before they are lost so that they can be utilized in irrigation, public and private capital is at present directed.

In many instances land owners individually and cooperatively have diverted the streams from their natural channels, and by conveying the waters upon the lands by means of canals and ditches from storage reservoirs and artesian wells have transformed sagebrush deserts into fields of. waving grain and alfalfa.

The Government under the Act of Congress approved June 17, 1902, and known as the Newlands Act, is engaged in reclaiming a tract of 200,000 acres in the Carson Sink Basin, where many thousands of acres have been brought under a high state of cultivation.

These lands are open to entry in the United States Land Office under the Homestead Acts and may be limited to from 40 to 160 acres to an entryman.

Full information regarding entry, price of water, etc., may be had by applying to the Hon. L. J. Cohn, Register of the United States Land Office, Carson City, Nevada.

THE CAREY ACT

Section 4 of the Act of Congress approved August 18, 1894, and the Acts supplemental thereto authorize the Secretary of the Interior, with the approval of the President, to contract and agree to patent to certain States in which may be found desert lands, free of cost as to survey and price, not to exceed one million acres of such desert lands to each State, including Nevada, under certain conditions set forth in the Act. The said Acts of Congress and the State Act authorizes the State Land Register, on the part of the State, to enter into contract with any person, persons, company or corporation for the reclamation of desert lands and the disposal of the same to settlers; and when an ample supply of water has been actually furnished in a substantial ditch or canal, or by artesian wells or reservoirs to reclaim any particular tract or tracts of such lands, and when said lands have been patented to the State by the United States, the State will issue patents direct to the actual settlers and bona fide occupant on such lands. The title passes from the United States to the State, and from the State to the settler.

The text of the Act is as follows:

SEC. 4. That to aid the public land States in the reclamation of the desert lands therein, and the settlement, cultivation, and sale thereof in small tracts to actual settlers, the Secretary of the Interior with the approval of the President, be, and hereby is, authorized and empowered, upon proper application of the State to contract and agree, from time to time, with each of the States in which there may be situated desert lands as defined by the Act entitled "An Act to provide for the sale of desert land in certain States and Territories," approved March third, eighteen hundred and seventy-seven, and the Act amendatory thereof, approved March third, eighteen hundred and ninety-one, binding the United States to donate, grant, and patent to the State free of cost for survey or price such desert lands, not exceeding one million acres in each State, as the State may cause to be irrigated, reclaimed, occupied, and not less than twenty acres of each one hundred and sixty-acre tract cultivated by actual settlers, within ten years next after the passage of this Act, as thoroughly as is required of citizens who may enter under the said desert land law.

Before the application of any State is allowed or any contract or agreement is executed or any segregation of any of the land from the public domain is ordered by the Secretary of the Interior, the State shall file a map of the said land proposed to be irrigated which shall exhibit a plan showing the mode of the contemplated irrigation and which plan shall be sufficient to thoroughly irrigate and reclaim said land and prepare it to raise ordinary agricultural crops and shall also show the source of the water to be used for irrigation and reclamation, and the Secretary of the Interior may make necessary regulations for the reservation of the lands applied for by the States to date from the date of the filing of the

map and plan of irrigation, but such reservation shall be of no force whatever if such map and plan of irrigation shall not be approved. That any State contracting under this section is hereby authorized to make all necessary contracts to cause the said lands to be reclaimed, and to induce their settlement and cultivation in accordance with and subject to the provisions of this section; but the State shall not be authorized to lease any of said lands or to use or dispose of the same in any way whatever, except to secure their reclamation, cultivation and settlement.

As fast as any State may furnish satisfactory proof according to such rules and regulations as may be prescribed by the Secretary of the Interior, that any of said lands are irrigated, reclaimed, and occupied by actual settlers, patents shall be issued to the State or its assigns for said lands so reclaimed and settled; prorided, that said States shall not sell or dispose of more than one hundred and sixty acres of said lands to any one person, and any surplus of money derived by any State from the sale of said lands in excess of the cost of their reclamation, shall be held as a trust fund for and be applied to the reclamation of other desert lands in such State. That to enable the Secretary of the Interior to examine any of the lands that may be selected under the provisions of this section, there is hereby appropriated out of any moneys in the Treasury, not otherwise appropriated, one thousand dollars.

In the Act making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1897, and for other purposes, approved June 11, 1896 (29 Stat. 413-434), there is, under the head of appropriation for "Surveying public lands, the following provision:

That under any law heretofore or hereafter enacted by any State, providing for the reclamation of arid lands, in pursuance and acceptance of the terms of the grant made in section four of an Act entitled "An Act making appropriations for the sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and ninety five, approved August eighteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, a lien or liens is hereby authorized to be created by the State to which such lands are granted and by no other authority whatever, and when created shall be valid on and against the separate legal subdivisions of land reclaimed, for the actual cost and necessary expenses of reclamation and reasonable interest thereon from the date of reclamation until disposed of to actual settlers; and when an ample supply of water is actually furnished in a substantial ditch or canal, or by artesian wells, or reservoirs, to reclaim a particular tract or tracts of such lands, then patents shall issue for the same to such State without regard to settlement or cultivation; provided, that in no event, in no contingency, and under no circumstances shall the United States be in any manner directly or indirectly liable for any amount of any such lien or liability, in whole or in part. The limitation of time in the above-quoted Section 4 was modified by Section 3 of the Act entitled

"An Act making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, nineteen hundred and two, and for other purposes, approved March 3, 1901 (31 Stat. 1133-1188), which provides as follows: SEC. 3. That Section 4 of the Act of August eighteenth, eighteen hundred and ninety-four, entitled "An Act making appropriations for sundry civil expenses of the Government for the fiscal year ending June thirtieth, eighteen hundred and ninety-five, and for other purposes, is hereby amended so that the ten years' period within which any State shall cause the lands applied for under said Act to be irrigated and reclaimed, as provided in said section as amended by the Act of June eleventh, eighteen hundred and ninety-six, shall begin to run from the date of approval by the Secretary of the Interior of the State's application for the segregation of such lands; and if the State fails within said ten years to cause the whole or any part of the lands so segregated to be so irrigated and reclaimed, the Secretary of the Interior may, in his discretion, continue said segregation for a period of not exceeding five years, or may, in his discretion, restore such lands to the public domam.

REGULATIONS

1. Under the provisions of the Acts quoted the States and Territories are allowed ten years from the date of the approval of the application for the segregation of the land by the Secretary of the Interior, in which

to irrigate and reclaim them. The Secretary of the Interior may, however, in his discretion, extend the time for irrigating and reclaiming the land for a period of five years, or he may restore to the public domain the lands not reclaimed at the expiration of the ten years, or of the extended period.

2. The lands selected under these Acts must all be desert lands, as defined by the Acts of 1877 and 1891, and the decisions and regulations of this department therein provided for.

Lands which produce native grasses sufficient in quantity, if unfed by grazing animals, to make an ordinary crop of hay in usual seasons, are not desert lands. Lands which will produce an agricultural crop of any kind in amount sufficient to make the cultivation reasonably remunerative are not desert. Lands containing sufficient moisture to produce a natural growth of trees are not to be classed as desert lands.

Lands occupied by bona fide settlers and lands containing valuable deposits of coal or other minerals are not subject to selection.

3. The second paragraph of Section 4, before quoted, provides that before the application of any State is allowed or any contract or agreement is executed or any segregation of any of the land from the public domain is ordered by the Secretary of the Interior, the State shall file a map of the land selected and proposed to be irrigated, which shall exhibit a plan showing the mode of contemplated irrigation and the source of the water. In accordance with the requirements of the Act, the State must give full data to show that the proposed plan will be sufficient to thoroughly irrigate and reclaim the land and prepare it to raise ordinary agricultural crops; for which purpose a statement by the State Engineer of the amount of water available for the plan of irrigation will be necessary. The other data required cannot be fully prescribed, as it will depend upon the nature of the plan submitted. All information necessary to enable this office to judge of its practicability for irrigating all the land selected must be submitted. Upon the filing of the map showing the plan of irrigation, and the lands selected, such lands will be withheld from other disposition until final action is had thereon by the Secretary of the Interior. If such final action be a disapproval of the map and plan, the lands selected shall, without further order, be subject to disposition as if such disposition had never been made; and the local officers will make the appropriate notations on the tract books and plat books, opposite those previously made, in accordance with the requirements of paragraph 7.

4. The map must be on tracing linen, in duplicate, and must be drawn to a scale not greater than 1,000 feet to 1 inch. A smaller scale is desirable, if the necessary information can be clearly shown. The map and field notes must be filed in the local Land Office for the district in which the land is located. If the lands selected are located in more than one district, duplicate map and field notes need be filed in but one district and single sets in the others. Each legal subdivision of the land selected should be clearly indicated on the map by a check mark, thus: ✓ The map and field notes must show the connections of termini of a canal or of the initial point of a reservoir with public survey corners, the connections with public survey corners, wherever section or township lines are crossed by the proposed irrigation works, and must show full data to admit of retracing the lines of the survey of the irrigation works on the ground.

5. The map should bear an affidavit of the engineer who made or supervised the preparation of the map and plan (Form 1, page 14), and also of the officer authorized by the State to make its selections under the Act (Form 2, page 15). The map should be accompanied by a list in triplicate of the lands selected, designated by legal subdivisions, properly summed up at the foot of each page, and at the end of the list. If the lands selected are located in more than one district, a list in triplicate must be filed in each office, describing the lands. selected in that district. Clear carbon copies are preferred for the duplicate and triplicate lists. The lists should be dated and verified by a certificate of the selecting agent (Form 3, page 15). The party appearing as agent of the State must file with the Register and Receiver written and satisfactory evidence, under seal, of his authority to act in the premises; such evidence once filed need not be duplicated during the period for which the agent was appointed. The State should number the lists in consecutive order, beginning with No. 1, regardless of the Land Office in which they are to be filed. Form of title page to be prefixed to the lists of selections will be found on page 15, marked "A" Lists received at this office containing erasures will not be filed, but will be returned in order that new ones may be prepared. When a township has not been subdivided, but has had its exteriors surveyed, the whole township may be designated, omitting, however, the sections to which the State may be entitled under its grant of school lands. When the records are in such condition that the proper notations may be made, a section or part of a section of unsurveyed land may be designated in the list; but no patent can issue thereon until the land has been surveyed.

6. A contract in the form herein prescribed (Form 5, page 16), in duplicate, signed by the state officer authorized to execute such contract, must also be filed. A carbon copy of the contract will not be accepted. The person who executes the contract on behalf of the State must furnish evidence of his authority to do so.

7. The lists must be carefully and critically examined by the Register and Receiver, and their accuracy tested by the plats and records of their office. When so examined and found correct in all respects, they will attach a certificate at the foot of each list (Form 4, pages 15, 16). The Register must note on the map, lists, contracts, and all papers the name of the Land Office and the date of filing over his written signature and will thereupon post the selections in ink in the tract book after the following manner: "Selected

the State

as desert land, Act of August 18, 1894, serial No. and on the plats he will mark the tracts so selected "State desert land selection? After the selections are properly posted and marked on the records, the lists, maps, and all papers will be transmitted to the General Land Office.

For rejected selections a new list will be required, upon which the Register will note opposite each tract the objections appearing on the records and endorse thereon his reasons in full for refusing to certify the same. The State will be allowed to appeal in the manner provided for in the Rules of Practice. It is required that clear lists of approvals shall in every case be made out by the selecting agents, if after the above examination one or more tracts have been rejected, showing clearly and without erasure the tracts to which the Register is prepared to certify.