You will hereafter see, in all cases, that the place of the actual residence and post-office addresses of applicants are properly stated in their applications. It is not sufficient to state that the place of residence is in a certain county, If the residence is in a town or city the same must be stated, and if in a city, the street and number must be given. If the residence of the applicant is in the country in any of the public land States or Territories, the section, township, and range upon which applicant resides must be given.

You will not hereafter receive timber culture, desert land, or other applications in which this requirement is not complied with, but all such applications will be returned for correction to the parties presenting or transmitting the same, and will not be placed on record until the omis sion is supplied.

Applicants will also be advised that changes of residence subsequent to allowance of application must be reported to the local officers, and, when so advised of such change of residence you will make proper note of the same.

In connection with the above, you are directed to hereafter note upor the paper itself, in case of every filing, declaration, or application, (where the same is not executed before you and presented by the applicant in person), the name of the party by whom the same was presented or transmitted.

You will strictly enforce the foregoing.

Approved:

L. Q. C. LAMAR,

Secretary.

MINING CLAIM-APPLICATION-SURVEY.

S. F. MACKIE.

An application for patent or the survey of a claim may embrace several contiguous locations.

In accordance with statutory requirement, the survey should exhibit the boundaries and conflicts of each location covered by the application.

Acting Secretary Muldrow to Commissioner Sparks, October 25, 1886. I have before me a letter from S. F. Mackie, of Salt Lake City, Utah, stating that the surveyor-general has made certain rulings relative to an application for the survey of a mining claim, which he regards as erroneous, and requesting the opinion of this Department thereon. To render an opinion upon such a presentation of a question is neither customary nor proper, and I would therefore be compelled to dismiss the request were it not accompanied by a communication from yourself asking a ruling for the benefit of the Land Office.

The questions presented arise out of departmental decision in the case of the Good Return Mining Co. (4 L. D., 221), which was also promulgated through circular of December 14, 1885 (Id., 374). Therein it was ruled that, where there is an application for patent for a "mining

claim" consisting of several mining locations, the applicant may show for the consolidated claim the expenditure specified in section 2325, R. S., but that he must show upon each location the expenditure specified in section 2324, R. S.; and that "an adverse claimant may prove abandonment of any one of such locations by failure to make annual expenditures upon it or upon a common claim for its benefit." This decision manifestly recognized the legality of an application for patent for a mining claim consisting of several locations, and such an application was afterwards expressly ruled to be legal in the case of the Champion Mining Company (4 L. D., 362), upon appeal from a decision of your office made prior to the rendition of the Good Return decision. Since your communication above referred to suggests a doubt concerning the import of said Champion decision, I may add that it was intended to rule only that a single application, either for patent or for the survey of a mining claim, is required when the claim includes several contiguous locations. It was not intended to and does not rule in relation to the mode or the expense of surveying such claims. These questions arise upon the alleged decision of the surveyor-general of Utah to the following effect, to wit:

"First. That each location must be considered as a separate lot, be separately surveyed, its boundaries marked by posts set at each corner, and the conflicts with all other lots (howsoever owned) shown.

"Second. That the deposits properly required by him are $27.00 for each location and $5.00 for each conflict."

In respect to the first question, the statutes seem to be plain. Section 2325, R. S., provides that a person, who has complied with the terms of the mining laws, and who applies for patent on a lode claim, must file in the local office a plat and field notes of his claim, which are described as follows, to wit:

"A plat and field notes of the claim or claims in common, made by or under the direction of the United States surveyor general, showing accurately the boundaries of the claim or claims, which shall be distinctly marked by monuments on the ground.

Sec. 2331. Where placer claims are upon surveyed lands, and conform to legal subdivisions, no further survey or plat shall be required."

The purpose of the requirement of plats in certain cases is manifestly twofold, namely, to inform the Land Department, as well as conflicting locators or protestants, of all the material facts concerning the claim which can be shown by plat and field notes. The Land Department must be advised that the claim, discovery, etc., are located on the pub lic domain, and therefore the plat must show all conflicting locations or claims, patented or unpatented. The applicant must also show that he has complied with the law in respect of the annual expenditure on each location, and consequently the survey must identify each location. The applicant must give notice of his claim to the world, in order that conflicting locators may file adverse claims; by such claims the issue raised is priority or maintenance of possession, and, as possessory rights

respect individual locations under the statute, the plats must distinguish the locations. Or, again, each location must be distinguished, to the end that protestants may be able to identify the land in respect of which a non compliance with local or general law is charged. And, finally, a survey of each location included in the application and patent is essential to the protection of the claimant; for, under the decision in Mining Co. v. Mining Co. (118 U. S., 196), the plat must show that the end lines of each location are parallel, in order that the patentee may have the right to follow a vein outside of the bounds of such location.

Apart from this general consideration of the purposes of a survey, the language of the statute would seem to be conclusive of the ques tion. By Section 2325, the survey is required to be "of the claim or claims in common," and to show "the boundaries of the claim or claims." The word "claim" in the mining laws has different meanings, and may refer either to a single location or to consolidated locations, as the intention of Congress in using it requires. In this case, in my judgment, it refers to the separate locations, not only because the intention of Congress can be satisfied by this construction alone, but because the word is used in both the singular and plural, and in the latter case manifestly refers to the "claims held in common" mentioned in Section 2324, which mean the separate locations. The statute therefore expressly requires that the survey shall exhibit the boundaries of each location covered by the application. Such has heretofore been the ruling of the Land Department, and it is thus substantially expressed in paragraph 7 of circular of December 4, 1884 (3 L. D., 540), which was not modified by circular of December 14, 1885 (4 L. D., 374). Such, also, is the effect of the decision in Smelting Co. v. Kemp (104 U. S., 636, 653), where the supreme court ruled upon this point as follows, to wit:

"The last position of the court below, that the owner of contiguous locations who seeks a patent must present a separate application for each, and obtain a separate survey, and prove that upon each the required work has been performed, is as untenable as the rulings already considered."

Here the court decide that there may be one application for several contiguous locations, with one plat, and proof for the consolidated claim of the work required by section 2325; and this decision was followed by the Department in the case of the Good Return Mining Co. (supra). When, however, they refer (p. 654) to proof of the annual expenditure required by section 2324, they construe the words "claim or claims" in the former section as identical with those words in the latter in the following passage, to wit:

"There is no force in the suggestion that a separate patent for each location is necessary to insure the required expenditure of labor upon it. The statute of 1872 provides that on each claim subsequently located until a patent is issued for it, there shall be annually expended in labor

or improvements one hundred dollars; and on claims previously located an annual expenditure of ten dollars for each one hundred feet in length along the vein; but where such claims are held in common,' the expenditure may be upon any one claim. As these provisions relate to expenditures before a patent is issued, proof of them will be a matter for consideration when application for the patent is made. It is not perceived in what way this proof can be changed or the requirement affected, whether the application be for a patent for one claim or for several claims held in common."

The case of Chambers v. Harrington (111 U. S., 350) is to the same effect, and clearly implies that the claims in common which may be included in one patent under section 2325 are the separate locations on or for each of which the annual expenditure must be made.

I therefore approve the existing regulations of the Land Department, namely, that the plat of survey when required, must show the boundaries and conflicts of each location of the consolidated claim.

In respect to the second point raised by your letter of inquiry, to wit, the expenses of the survey, I do not deem it expedient now, if indeed it be possible, to formulate a fixed ruling. Such matters are remitted to the control of your office by section 2334, R. S., subject of course to the supervision of the Department. The existing tariff of charges, approved by the Land Department, being presumptively reasonable where application is made for the survey of a single location or claim, I can conceive of cases where perhaps it would properly apply to the survey of consolidated claims; and, again, I can conceive of cases where probably, if applied, the expenses would be unreasonable. But it would seem that the decision of the question in each case must depend on the particular facts, the form and relation of the several claims and conflicts, and therefore could not be intelligently reached without an inspection of the plat. I remit this question to your office for further consideration, and for the formulation and submission to the Department of a modified tariff of surveying charges, if a fixed ruling in the case of consolidated claims be deemed practicable.

RAILROAD GRANT-RESERVATION.

MCANDREW v. CHICAGO, M. & ST. P. RY. Co.

The inadvertent marking on the records of the local office of a warrant location constitutes no appropriation or reservation of the land covered thereby.

The case of Cole v. Markley cited and distinguished.

Acting Secretary Muldrow to Commissioner Sparks, October 28, 1886.

I have considered the appeal of James K. McAndrew from your office decision of January 19, 1885, adverse to him as pre-emption applicant for the SE. of Sec. 7, T. 96 N., R. 39 W., Des Moines, Iowa. The facts as disclosed by the record before me are as follows:

McAndrew presented his pre emption declaratory statement at the local office December 2, 1884, for the tract above described, and his

application to file was on the same day refused, for the reason that said tract "appears to be covered by land warrant location

Wt. No. 45, 167-160 a. —act 1855, and is moreover within railroad limits." From this action he appealed to your office, and claimed that the abstract of land warrant locations for May, 1857, shows that the warrant above mentioned was located on the corresponding tract in range "38” and not in "39," where this tract lies.

In examining the case on appeal your office found that its records "do not show any entry of the tract, but do show that said warrant was located on the corresponding tract in range 38, and that the location was patented December 1, 1859."

The decision, the appeal from which is now before me, therefore declared the objection, on account of the land warrant location, untenable, but found the tract in question to be within the ten miles, or granted, limits of the grant to the State of Iowa for the railroad now known as the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul Railway, and within the twenty miles limits of the grant for the Sioux City and St. Paul Railroad, both of which grants were made by the act of May 12, 1864 (13 Stat., 72).

Said decision also recites that the line of road first named was definitely located opposite the tract in question September 2, 1869, and further that said tract fell within the limits of the withdrawal of September 12, 1864. It held that consequently the land is not subject to disposal under the laws of the United States, and for this reason affirmed the action of the local office rejecting appellant's application to make pre-emption filing for the tract.

An examination of the records of your office shows that the applica tion to locate the land warrant herein mentioned described the tract which was subsequently patented under said location. It is therefore manifest that the marking of the location on the records of the local office as in range 39 was an inadvertence, or error, and that it in no sense constituted a disposal of the tract covered by such erroneous marking.

The grant for the benefit of the railroad companies, in section one thereof, granted

"Every alternate section of land designated by odd numbers for ten sections in width on each side of said roads; but, in case it shall appear that the United States have, when the lines or routes are definitely located, sold any section or any part thereof, granted as aforesaid, or that the right of pre-emption or homestead settlement has attached to the same, or that the same has been reserved by the United States for any purpose whatever, then it shall be the duty of the Secretary of the Interior to cause to be selected, for the purposes aforesaid, from the public lands of the United States nearest to the tiers of sections above specified, so much land in alternate sections or parts of sections, designated by odd numbers, as shall be equal to such lands as the United States have sold, reserved, or otherwise appropriated, or to which the right of homestead settlement or pre emption has attached as afore said," etc.