which they were enacted as to permit the acquisition of large areas of the public domain for other than actual settlers and the consequent prevention of settlement.  Moreover, the approaching exhaustion of the public ranges has of late led to much discussion as to the best manner of using these public lands in the West which are suitable chiefly or only for grazing.  The sound and steady development of the West depends upon the building up of homes therein.  Much of our prosperity as a nation has been due to the operation of the homestead law.  On the other hand, we should recognize the fact that in the grazing region the man who corresponds to the homesteader may be unable to settle permanently if only allowed to use the same amount of pasture land that his brother, the homesteader, is allowed to use of arable land.  One hundred and sixty acres of fairly rich and well-watered soil, or a much smaller amount of irrigated land, may keep a family in plenty, whereas no one could get a living from one hundred and sixty acres of dry pasture land capable of supporting at the outside only one head of cattle to every ten acres.  In the past great tracts of the public domain have been fenced in by persons having no title thereto, in direct defiance of the law forbidding the maintenance or construction of any such unlawful inclosure of public land.  For various reasons there has been little interference with such inclosures in the past, but ample notice has now been given the trespassers, and all the resources at the command of the Government will hereafter be used to put a stop to such trespassing.

In view of the capital importance of these matters, I commend them to the earnest consideration of the Congress, and if the Congress finds difficulty in dealing with them from lack of thorough knowledge of the subject, I recommend that provision be made for a commission of experts specially to investigate and report upon the complicated questions involved.

I especially urge upon the Congress the need of wise legislation for Alaska.  It is not to our credit as a nation that Alaska, which has been ours for thirty-five years, should still have as poor a system Of laws as is the case.  No country has a more valuable possession—­in mineral wealth, in fisheries, furs, forests, and also in land available for certain kinds of farming and stockgrowing.  It is a territory of great size and varied resources, well fitted to support a large permanent population.  Alaska needs a good land law and such provisions for homesteads and pre-emptions as will encourage permanent settlement.  We should shape legislation with a view not to the exploiting and abandoning of the territory, but to the building up of homes therein.  The land laws should be liberal in type, so as to hold out inducements to the actual settler whom we most desire to see take possession of the country.  The forests of Alaska should be protected, and, as a secondary but still important matter, the game also, and at the same time