his biennial message says: "There is great difficulty in finding lands subject to location in this state. I have considered it of paramount importance to first select lands for the benefit of the common schools. Enough of that class has not yet been found to make up the amount to which the state is entitled, therefore no lands have yet been selected for the benefit of the agricultural college."[1]
As these lands had not yet been selected in 1868 and as the state's extension of time in which to erect the college would have nearly elapsed by the time of the next session of the Legislature, the Legislature of 1868 appointed a special commission to select the agricultural college lands and to prepare plans for the college. This committee reported in 1870 that it had selected all such lands to which the state was entitled excepting some 92 acres. These selections were made in a block in the Klamath Lake country. This was then a region remote from settlement. The lands were located there because no considerable body of surveyed lands subject to private entry near settled districts was available. The Klamath lands, however, were not technically subject to private entry as the terms of the act of Congress required they should be to make them available for selection by the state for agricultural college lands.[2]
It required an act of Congress to legalize this selection by the state. This was secured in the session of 1871-2, and the administrative ratification of the selection soon followed. The lands of the agricultural college grant were thus fully vested in the state after a lapse of some ten years from the time the act making the grant was passed.
The Internal Improvement Grant. An act of Congress of September 4, 1841, provided that 500,000 acres of public lands shall be granted "to each state that shall hereafter be admitted into the Union," for internal improvements. This act was in----
