After a lapse of nearly thirty years, more than one thousand claims have been filed with the surveyors-general, of which less than 150 have been reported to Congress, and of the number so reported Congress has finally acted upon only 71. The construction of railroads through Xew Mexico and Arizona, and the consequent influx of population in those Territories, renders it imperatively necessary that these claims should be finally settled with the least possible delay. I have, therefore, the honor to recommend that the attention of Congress be called especially to this subject, with a view to securing action upon the claims pending before it, and upon the pending bill providing for the settlement of the remaining claims.
REDWOOD AND BIG TREES.
In my last annual report I called attention to the fact that the waste and
destruction of the redwood and the "big trees" of California have been
and continue to be so great as to cause apprehension that in the course
of years these magnificent species may entirely disappear unless some
measure be taken to preserve at least a portion of them. I recommended
at the same time that the President be authorized to withdraw from sale
or other disposition an area at least equal to two townships in the coast
range in the northern and an equal area in the southern part of the
State of California upon which these interesting trees grow. That bill
has not yet been acted upon, and it seems important that if any measure
for the preservation of these species of trees is to be taken at all, it
should be done as soon as possible. I therefore once more commend
this subject to the attention of Congress.
TIMBER-LANDS.
In my first annual report I had the honor to present to you in 1877,
and every successive year thereafter, I invited attention to the extensive
depredations committed on the timber-lands of the United States, and
the rapid and indiscriminate destruction of our forests, especially in the
South and in the States and Territories of the West. Referring to the
warning example furnished by other parts of the world, where the disappearance of the forests had been followed by the most deplorable consequences: the drying up of springs; the irregularity of the water-supply
in navigable rivers; the frequency of destructive freshets and inundations; the transformation of once productive and flourishing agricultural districts into barren wastes, almost uninhabitable to man—I showed
that the same results would inevitably befall certain parts of this country,
if so short-sighted and reckless a practice be persisted in as is now prevailing. I set forth as a universally acknowledged fact that especially
in our mountainous regions the stripping of the slopes of their timber
would be an irreparable injury, inasmuch as the rainfall and the water
from melting snows would wash down the soil, transform brooks and
rivulets running regularly while the forests stand, into raging torrents
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