This decree, though it withdrew the line of territory claimed thus far northward, was yet offensive in tone and arbitrary in many of the regulations it sought to enforce against the citizens of other nations. Besides, it still encroached upon territory claimed by both Britain and the United States. Both England and America protested, and opened, each in her own behalf, negotiations with Russia which resulted in establishing in 1824 the line of 54° 40´ as the boundary between the territories claimed by Russia and those claimed by America, and in the following year the same line, with modifications to the east, as the boundary between the claims of Russia and those of Britain. These two conventions may be regarded as the final acts in the delimitation of the Oregon Territory. JOSEPH R. WILSON. (_To be continued._) OUR PUBLIC LAND SYSTEM AND ITS RELATION TO EDUCATION IN THE UNITED STATES. Local historians seem inclined to overlook some of the most interesting subjects included under the general term of history. One of these is the origin of land titles. I do not propose in this article, limited as to space, to do more than indicate by slight touches the growth of land titles on the earth, and the steps by which we as a nation became endowed with the ownership of land in parcels large or small. Further, the object of this brief review is to fix in the mind of the student of history, and especially of Oregon history, the connection between land and educational privileges in his state. By way of introduction I would put forth the proposition, by no means original, that God-made things are eternal, and belong to the children of men equally and forever. Such is man himself. There can be no human ownership of men except that of brotherhood. The dominion of man over all other life is for his use only. He cannot claim collective ownership of any particular genus or species, but only individual ownership by conquest. Of the great divisions of inanimate nature, earth, air, and water, individual man cannot own more than he uses, because they belong equally to all men, and to all living things. For the needs of these they were created, without preference for races or single representatives of races.