For the better information of the reader, the following directions to obtain the public lands are here given: PUBLIC LANDS, How to secure the Public Lands under the Preemption and Homestead Laws. Department of THE INTERIOR, GENERAL LAND OFFICE, July 19, 1865. Numerous questions having arisen as to the mode of proceeding to purchase public lands, or acquire title to the same by bounty land locations, by preëmptions, or by homestead, this circular is communicated for the information of all concerned. In order to acquire title to public lands, the following steps must be taken: 1. Application must be made to the register of the district land office in which the land desired may be situated. A list of all the land offices in the United States is furnished by the department, with the seat of the different offices, where it is the duty of the register and receiver to be in attendance, and give proper facilities and information to persons desirous of obtaining lands. The minimum price of ordinary public lands is one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre. The even or reserved sections falling within railroad grants are increased to double the minimum price, being two dollars and fifty cents per acre. Lands once offered at public sale, and not afterwards kept out of market by reservation or otherwise, so as to prevent free competition, may be entered or located. 2. By the applicant filing with the register his written application describing the tract, with its area, the register will then certify to the receiver whether the land is vacant, with its price; and when found to be so, the applicant must pay that price per acre, or may locate the same with land-warrant, and thereafter the receiver will give him a "duplicate receipt," which he is required to surrender prior to the delivery to him of the patent, which may be had either by application for it to the register or to the General Land Office. 3. If the tract has not been offered at public sale, it is not liable to ordinary private entry, but may be secured by a party legally qualified, upon his compliance with the requirements of the preëmption laws of 4th September, 1841, and 3d March, 1843; and after such party shall have made actual settlement for such a length of time as will show he designs it for his permanent home and is acting in good faith, building a house and residing therein, he may proceed to the district land office, establish his preemption claim according to law by proving his actual residence and cultivation, and showing that he is otherwise within the purview of these acts. Then he can enter the land at one dollar and twenty-five cents, either with cash or with bounty land-warrant, unless the premises should be two dollars and fifty cents per acre lands. In that case the whole purchase money can be paid in cash, or one-half in cash, the residue with a bounty land-warrant. 4. But if parties legally qualified desire to obtain title under the Homestead Act of 20th May, 1862, they can do so on complying with the Department Circular dated 30th October, 1862. 5. The law confines homestead entries to surveyed lands; and although, in certain States and Territories referred to in the original law, preëmptors may go on lands before survey, yet they can only establish their claim after return of survey, but must file their preemption declaration within three months after receipt of official plat, at the local land office where the settlement was made before survey. Where, however, it was made after survey, the claimant must file within three months after date of settlement; and where actual residence and cultivation have been long enough to show that the claimant has made the land his permanent home, he can establish his claim, and pay for the same at any time before the date of the public sale of lands within the range of which his settlement may fall. 6. All unoffered surveyed lands not acquired under preemption, homestead, or otherwise, under express legal sanction, must be offered at public sale under the President's proclamation, and struck off to the highest bidder, as required by the Act of April 24, 1820. J. M. EDMUNDS, Commissioner General Land Office. SCHOOL LANDS.-The State of California obtained by grant from the National Congress six million acres of the public domain in the State; this consists of the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections in each township. These lands are mostly disposed of already; still such as are left may be purchased, at one dollar and twenty-five cents per acre, on easy terms. The State Surveyor-General being, ex officio, State Locating Agent, all the applicant has to do is to make application to him, where the necessary blanks and all information may be obtained. Citizens of the United States, or those having made their declaration of intention of citizenship, only can obtain these lands. Besides these lands mentioned, there are millions of acres of good agricultural lands for sale in the State, with respectable offices and agents in every county and town of importance to give information to the purchaser. It is a most difficult task to attempt a description of the quality, value, and price of lands in the State, so much depends upon location. Lands in the hands of private owners can be bought all the way from twenty-five cents to five hundred dollars per acre. In many portions of the counties adjoining the Bay of San Francisco rich agricultural lands can be bought for from fifty to one hundred dollars per acre, and in the wheat-growing regions of the San Joaquin and other valleys good farm-land can be purchased at from five to fifteen dollars per acre, often on very favorable terms. It must always be borne in mind that when agricultural lands are spoken of in California there is meant a good rich soil, entirely free from rock or trees of any description, and generally every foot being fit for the plow; all the great valleys and rich rolling hills in the State being covered with wild oats and grass, and entirely free from timber, brush, or stones. WHEAT.-The official report of the Surveyor-General of the State shows that, in 1869, (this year is selected as being a fair average season,) there were 2,343,204 acres under cultivation, 1,286,133 of which were under wheat and 468,076 under barley. This report, as well as the reports of the Agricultural Bureau of Congress for 1869, affords many illustrations of the great productiveness of California over every State of the Union. Besides the superiority of California wheat, the yield per acre surpasses all the States of the Union, and every country in the world. The total wheat crop of 1869 was about twenty-five million bushels, and the average annual yield amounts to twenty-one bushels to the acre. To illustrate the great productiveness of California, and to assure the reader that wheat-growing is not confined to the central valleys of the State, and that certain localities produce beyond any other portion of the world, it is only necessary to say, that throughout the northern portions of the State, and high up in the Sierras, the average of wheat and barley is greater than in the counties adjoin. ing the Bay of San Francisco, and not so liable to rust or other blight as in these latter counties. The counties of Humboldt and Del Norte, in the rugged mountains, and at the northern line of the State, average twenty-five and twenty-seven bushels to the acre respectively; and Alpine county, perched up in the Sierras, averages twenty bushels of wheat to the acre. Throughout all parts of the State, in the great valleys, the Sierras and the Coast Range, there are many small valleys of inexhaustible richness, producing annually from sixty to one hundred and twenty bushels of prime wheat to the acre. Like the entire grain-producing regions of the State, these valleys have been sown in wheat for from twelve to twenty years without one season's intermission, and without receiving a shovelful of manure or change of crop. Except in a few instances of gardening, there is no manure used upon the soil. Year after year, wheat, barley, beans, and potatoes are raised upon the same land, without any artificial stimulant: indeed, most of the farmers never save a particle of manure, and know but little of its use. To illustrate the superiority of California as a wheatgrowing country, let us compare the annual yield per acre with the wheat-producing regions of the Atlantic slope, as shown by the official returns for 1869. The highest yield east of the Rocky mountains is credited to Vermont-sixteen bushels to the acre; next comes Iowa-fourteen and a-half bushels; and third on the list, New York-fourteen bushels; Wisconsin, thirteen bushels; Illinois, eleven and a-half bushels; Kentucky, eight and a-half bushels; Tennessee, six bushels; Texas, six bushels; and Kansas but five bushels. It will here be seen that, in the most favored wheat-producing regions of the Atlantic States, the average yield per acre is but a little over one-half of the yield in California, while in many States it is but one-third, and in some less than one-fourth. The California wheat is produced upon land neither requiring clearing of timber, brush, stones, or other obstructions, but where the gang-plow can run uninterrupted over hundreds of thousands of acres, and without the aid of manure. Then, too, there are no threatening clouds or rain-storms in the autumn sky; no binding of sheaves and stooking. The harvest is carried directly from the mower, dry as tinder, to the thresher, |