under the former locations equal $500 for patenting the joint claim, with the idea of dividing the claim immediately after patent is obtained.

A placer location, no matter for what it has been made, takes all minerals subject to location as placers, and after application for patent takes all lodes except known lodes, which subject will be treated in the next chapter.

Salt Deposits and Salt Springs

ACT OF CONGRESS: That all unoccupied public lands of the United States containing salt springs, or deposits of salt in any form, and chiefly valuable therefor, are hereby declared to be subject to location and purchase under the provisions of the law relating to placer-mining claims; provided, that the same person shall not locate or enter more than one claim hereunder. This Act is operative in all the public lands of the United States, and not in the mining-law States alone. It is only by the production of salt through the usual processes that a saline spring or deposit becomes subject to placer location, and the use of a salt spring as a bathing resort instead does not tend to validate a placer location.

Building Stone

ACT OF CONGRESS: That any person authorized to enter lands under the mining laws of the United States, may enter lands that are chiefly valuable for building stone under the provisions of the law in relation to placer-mineral claims; provided, that lands reserved for the benefit of the public schools or donated to any State shall not be subject to entry under this Act.

It will be observed that the right to locate building-stone placers upon school and State lands is denied, whereas all other placers may be located and patented upon such lands under the conditions stated in the chapter on 'Where locations may be made.' Building stone, upon surveyed land, may also be secured under the Timber and Stone Act as well as by placer location, but upon unsurveyed land by placer location only.

Petroleum and Oil

ACT OF CONGRESS: That any person authorized to enter lands under the mining laws of the United States, may enter and obtain patent to lands containing petroleum or other mineral oils, and chiefly valuable therefor, under the provisions of the laws relating to placer-mineral claims.

ACT OF CONGRESS: That where oil lands are located * * * as placer mining claims, the annual assessment labor upon such claims may be done upon any one of a group of claims lying contiguous and owned by the same person or corporation, not exceeding five claims in all; provided, that said labor will tend to the development or to determine the oil-bearing character of such contiguous claims.

The placer-mining laws are not well adapted for locating oil lands, but in the absence of suitable laws, oil lands were located as placers until the Land Department ruled that oil was not a mineral and that oil lands should not be taken up as placers. This resulted in Congress passing the above Statute legalizing the location of oil lands as placers. The whole forms an excellent example of the apathy in formulating and enacting suitable mining laws.

The discovery of oil necessary to validate an oil location must be a discovery of actual oil in material quantities sufficient to justify the belief that oil in commercial quantities may exist; indications, oil formations, and oil seepages will not suffice. Until the locator discovers oil, which usually means the expenditure of considerable time and money, the courts will protect him in his possession of the ground to the fullest extent that they are able, while he is attempting in good faith to discover oil; but just as with a lode location, there is no valid location until a discovery is made, and others have more or less right to attempt to make a discovery as well as the prior claimant. The location of land more valuable for oil than for other purposes under the guise of locating for other mineral is invalid and cannot be sustained under protest or perfected to patent. The new land-withdrawal law does not allow locations for oil to be made upon withdrawn areas, but says concerning al

ready existing oil locations, "that the rights of any person who, at the date of any order of withdrawal heretofore or hereafter made, is a bona fide occupant or claimant of oil or gas-bearing lands, and who, at such date is in diligent prosecution of work leading to discovery of oil or gas, shall not be affected or impaired by such order, so long as such occupant or claimant shall continue in diligent prosecution of said work. And provided further, that this Act shall not be construed as a recognition, abridgment, or enlargement of any asserted rights or claims initiated upon any oil or gas-bearing lands after any withdrawal of such lands made prior to the passage of this Act."

Since the Land Department holds that where an association placer claim is conveyed to a single individual before a discovery is made, the subsequent discovery will only validate 20 acres of the claim, the Act of March 2, 1911, was passed to allow association oil claims upon which development work had been started before the land was withdrawn from location, to become valid to their full extent, even if transferred to a single individual before discovery. The Act reads:

ACT OF CONGRESS: That in no case shall patent be denied to or for any lands heretofore located or claimed under the mining laws of the United States containing petroleum, mineral oil, or gas solely because of any transfer or assignment thereof or of any interest or interests therein by the original locator or locators, or any of them, to any qualified persons or person, or corporation, prior to discovery of oil or gas therein, but if such claim is in all other respects valid and regular, patent therefor not exceeding one hundred and sixty acres in any one claim shall issue to the holder or holders thereof, as in other cases; provided, however, that such lands were not at the time of inception of development on or under such claim withdrawn from mineral entry.

CHAPTER XIV

Lodes Within Placers

R. S., Sec. 2333: Where the same person, association, or corporation is in possession of a placer claim, and also a vein or lode included within the boundaries thereof, application shall be made for a patent for the placer claim, with the statement that it includes such vein or lode, and in such case a patent shall issue for the placer claim, subject to the provisions of this chapter, including such vein or lode, upon the payment of $5 per acre for such vein or lode claim and twenty-five feet of surface on each side thereof. The remainder of the placer claim or any placer claim not embracing any vein or lode claim shall be paid for at the rate of $2.50 per acre, together with all costs of proceedings; and where a vein or lode, such as is described in section 2320, is known to exist within the boundaries of a placer claim, an application for a patent for such placer claim which does not include an application for the vein or lode claim, shall be construed as a conclusive declaration that the claimant of the placer claim has no right of possession of the vein or lode claim; but where the existence of a vein or lode in a placer claim is not known, a patent for the placer claim shall convey all valuable mineral and other deposits within the boundaries thereof.

The intent of the above Statute was to place known lodes in placer claims open to exploration and purchase by those interested in the working of lodes, instead of allowing them to remain idle and undeveloped through having come unsought into the possession of those only interested in placers. Also, that the greater ease and less cost by which placer ground may be obtained might not induce placer location and patent over ground only nominally placer for the purpose of obtaining any lodes which it was known to contain. The law has not been fully worked out, since practically all of the court decisions

cover cases of lode location after issuance of the placer patent. The Statute is not operative on claims patented prior to the date of its passage, May 10, 1872; such earlier patented claims include the right to the known lodes.

A lode, to come within the scope of this law, must be known at date of application for patent upon the placer claim. Lodes discovered afterward are the property of the placer patentee, even in the case of a lode that, without showing or being exposed on the placer claim, was being worked on an adjoining claim and later was followed on its strike into the placer claim after the application for placer patent. A lode that is considered valueless or that has been abandoned as worthless, is not such a known lode. It must have a value that will justify exploration. It must approach the conditions whereby a lode location defeats an agricultural entry. A valid lode location made prior to a conflicting placer location takes its full area. A lode location made under the Statute in question after the placer location, is entitled to fifty feet in width along the vein -twenty-five feet on each side. When patent is asked by the placer claimant, the proper procedure for the lode claimant is to secure exclusion of his lode strip or adverse the patent to that extent. If successful, he will be enabled to secure his lode patent in the usual way. If this precaution is not taken, or in the case of a lode location made after placer patent, when the lode claimant asks for his patent, hearing will be held to determine by the facts presented, if the lode is a known lode as contemplated by the Statute, and the Land Department has the right in consequence to grant such a patent.

A mooted question is, has the placer claimant, before making application for placer patent, the possessory right to and the refusal of all known lodes without having located them as such? One conclusion of the Statute is that he has. A court decision says that a stranger cannot enter within the lines of a placer location to prospect for lodes, and if he does so enter and discovers and locates a lode, it is a claim initiated by trespass and is void. But such a discovered lode now becomes a known lode, just as any lode uncovered in any way or by anyone up to application for patent. The placer claimant or one to whom