Even the state that sold her birth-right--one hundred and fifty billion feet of standing forest for nine hundred million dollars--is not without influence for good. All these noble acts of the states and of the people will be heard in time; for the government of the nation is not given to disregard the will of the people, and has ever shown a readiness to take the front and co-operate with the states in every good work. But there is something more required of a government--the representatives of the people must do more than simply respond to petitions. In a free republican government the people are both sovereigns and wards, and they expect those who assume legislative and executive powers of the nation to understand political economy sufficiently to manage correctly the finances and the natural wealth of the nation with intelligence and superior wisdom. And in this direction it would certainly prove a most laudable act to withdraw from sale or entry for a long period, if not perpetually, _all_ remaining forests and all arid lands where the rain-fall is below twenty inches, and place the same under the management of the Secretary of Agriculture, with ample powers and appropriations to build up a grand system of forestry, surpassing in extent and wealth all similar institutions belonging to the monarchies of Europe combined. Governor J. J. Stevens, in his final report of surveys for a railroad across the Rocky Mountains, called the attention of the government, in 1855, to the arid lands west of the Missouri river, between parallels forty degrees and forty-nine north latitude. He compared it in extent, climate, rain-fall, and other features, to the Steppes, which occupies about one-fifth of the Russian Empire, and quotes the “Commentaries of the Productive Sources of Russia” to sustain his statements: “Among other peculiarities of the Steppes a very prominent and distinctive one is the absence of timber, ... and opinions differ greatly as to the possibility of wooding it anew.” Since 1855, the Russian Government has arrived at one conclusion, and adopted a policy of reforesting this two hundred and forty thousand square miles worthy of imitation. Let the Government of the United States do as Russia has been doing, and the steppes from the Missouri river to the mountains will be reclaimed and made to “blossom as the rose.” According to geological surveys there are seven hundred and fifty million acres of arid, treeless lands, incapable of successful cultivation without irrigation--but where trees can be grown--for experiments have shown that trees will grow where the rain-fall is insufficient for grain or grass.