purpose of taking out minerals, and in case of coal mines, commonly a worked vein; an excavation properly underground for digging out some usual product, as ore, metal, or coal, including any deposit of any material suitable for excavation and working, as a placer mine; the underground passage and workings by which the minerals are gotten together with these minerals themselves; the term "mine" when applied to coal is generally equivalent to a worked vein, for by working the vein it becomes a mine; the mode of obtaining the material and not the nature of the material itself is to be considered in order to come to a decision whether it constitutes a mine.

(Northern Pac. R. Co. vs. Mjelde (Montana), 137 Pacific, 386, p. 389, December, 1913.)

Extent of Claim.

The locator of a lode mining claim can not claim a greater length in either direction along the vein or lode than is specified in his location notice.

(Swanston vs. Koneninger (Idaho), 137 Pacific, 891, p. 892, December, 1913.)

Amended Location.

The locator of a mining claim may amend his location if it can be done without prejudice to the rights of others.

(Gobert vs. Butterfield (California), 136 Pacific, 316, p. 517, October, 1913.)

Excessive Location-Effect.

A location in excess of the statutory limit, made in good faith and with injury to others, is voidable only as to the excess.

(Gobert vs. Butterfield (California), 136 Pacific, 516, p. 517, October, 1913.)

MARKING BOUNDARIES.

Marking Boundaries on the Ground-Purpose.

The object of the law in requiring the location of the mining claim to be marked upon the ground is to fix the claim to prevent floating or swinging, so that persons who in good faith are looking for unoccupied ground in the vicinity of the location may be enabled to ascertain exactly what ground has been appropriated in order to make their locations upon the residue.

(Swanston vs. Koneninger (Idaho), 137 Pacific, 891, p. 893, December, 1913.)

Marking Boundaries-Effect and Obliteration.

When a mining claim is once sufficiently marked on the ground and all necessary location acts are performed, the locator is vested with a right which can not be divested by a subsequent obliteration of the marks or removal of the stakes, without his fault, and the fact that the original stakes can not in later years be found raises no presumption against the validity of the original marking.

(Gobert vs. Butterfield (California), 136 Pacific, 516, p. 517, October, 1913.)

Labor performed by the owner of a mining claim in constructing a wagon road thereto for the purpose of better developing and operating his mine and for the purpose of aiding in the conduct of mining operations on the particular claim to which it is sought to be accredited, the value whereof is duly certified by the surveyor general, may be accredited as assessment work or as development work required as a prerequisite to the issuance of a patent.

IMPROVEMENTS.

Expenditures for Drill Holes.

Expenditures made upon drill holes placed upon a lode mining claim in good faith with a view to prospect the claim, or in order to secure data upon which further development work may be performed, are available toward meeting the statutory provision requiring an expenditure of $500 as a basis of patent, as to all of the claims of a group situated in close proximity to the common improvement. (East Titanic Min. Co., In re, 43 Land Dec., 79, p. 83, January, 1914.)

EXTRACTS FROM BULLETIN No. 101, U. S. BUREAU OF MINES.

Mining Claims.

GENERAL FEATURES.

Mining Locations on Apex of Vein.

The course of a vein appearing on the surface is the course of its apex, and as a miner is required to locate his claim along the vein this means that he must locate it along the outcrop or course of the apex if it is found impracticable for him to locate it along the strike of the vein.

(Stewart Mining Co. vs. Bourne, 218 Fed., 327, p. 329.)

PLACER CLAIMS.

Known Lodes-Placer Patent.

Neither a deed for a placer location nor a lode location upon the land by the placer applicant himself is prima facie evidence of a known lode, and both are deprived of all value by evidence of the nonexistence of a lode, and a lode subsequently located within the placér limits can not be "known to exist" at the time of a placer application for patent, where it appears that it was in fact discovered in the bedrock when the placer deposits were removed by extensive work long subsequent to the patent application.

(Barnard Realty Co. vs. Nolan, 215 Fed., 996, p. 998.)

Title to Known Lodes.

Known lodes, though unidentified and indefinite, are excepted and excluded from placer patents, and title to them remains in the United States, and at any time thereafter they may be, by strangers, to the patent, possessed, located, and patented as any other lode upon public lands.

(Barnard Realty Co. vs. Nolan, 215 Fed., 996, p. 999.)

Application for Placer Patent-Ownership of Known Lodes.

Where lodes known to exist are excepted from a placer grant, title to them continues in the United States and they are open to location as lodes in public land by third persons at any time.

(Clark Montana Realty Co. vs. Ferguson, 218 Fed., 959, p. 963.)

EXTRACTS FROM BULLETIN No. 113, U. S. BUREAU OF MINES.

Minerals and Mineral Lands.

MINERALS.

Oil and Gas as Minerals.

Oil and gas within the ground are minerals and the fact that they have attributes not common to other minerals because of their fugitive nature or vagrant habit, and the disposition to percolate, and the possibility of their escape from beneath one part of the surface to another, does not remove them from the class of minerals.

(Texas Co. vs. Daugherty (Texas), 176 Southwestern, 717, p. 719, May, 1915.)

Mining Claims.

NATURE AND GENERAL FEATURES.

Nature of State Statutes.

The disposition of mining ground is wholly within the control of the federal government, and state statutes for regulation of the location of mining claims and for protection of the possession thereof are statutes of peace and repose, intended to prevent disorder in claiming and holding mining ground.

(Florence-Rae Copper Co. vs. Kimbel (Washington), 147 Pacific, 881, p. 884, January, 1915.)

Method of Acquiring Claim.

Congress has provided how mining claims can be acquired, and this may be done by discovery of mineral, gold, silver, or copper, and like, upon the public lands and by staking the same off or marking it upon the ground.

(Trinity Gold Dredging & Hydraulic Co. vs. Beaudry, 223 Federal, 739, p. 741, May, 1915.)

Mining Claim as Property.

A mining claim when perfected is declared to be property in the highest sense of the term, and may be bought, sold, and conveyed, and will pass by descent.

(Trinity Gold Dredging & Hydraulic Co. vs. Beaudry, 223 Federal, 739, p. 741, May, 1915.)

(See United States Mining Statutes Annotated, 32, 93, 122, 188, 701.)

Mining claims are property in the fullest sense of the word, distinct from the land itself, vendable, inheritable, and taxable.

(Earhart vs. Powers (Arizona), 148 Pacific, 286, p. 287, May, 1915.)

DISCOVERY.

Location Without Discovery-Effect and Value.

A mining location under the United States Statutes, without discovery of minerals, can not be said to be totally invalid and of no effect, as the title by such location and possession is good as against every person contending against it, except the government of the United States; and a transfer of such a location gives the transferee the right to proceed to prosecute work with a view of making a discovery of oil and such possession can not be disturbed by strangers, and is good and the right to such possession is sufficient as a consideration for a lease.

(Hullinger vs. Big Sespe Oil Co. (California), 151 Pacific, 269, p. 370, August, 1915.)

EXTRALATERAL RIGHTS.

Ownership of Ores at Intersection of Veins.

The owner of a senior location owns all the ore in a vein apexing within his location and owns all the ore at the point of intersection of his vein and a vein apexing in the junior location and is not subject to the charge of being a trespasser while extracting and removing the ore at such point of intersection.

Esselstyn vs. United States Gold Corporation (Colorado), 149 Pacific, 93, p. 95, June, 1915.)

ASSESSMENT WORK.

Expenses Incurred in Moving Machinery.

The expenses of getting heavy machinery to a mining claim and a mine thereon which, when in use, will tend to the development of the claim will be allowed on the annual assessment work on such claim, although the machinery and expenses incurred are not within the boundaries of the claim.

(Florence-Rae Copper Co. vs. Kimbel (Washington), 147 Pacific, 881, p. 885, January, 1915.)

POSSESSORY RIGHTS.

Conditions-Performance of Assessment Work.

The right of continuous occupation of a mining claim properly located under the statute may be maintained by keeping up the assessment work prescribed by law; and this may be done without incurring the obligation toward the government of buying and paying for the same; and when a person entitled to the benefit of the statute has made a location in accordance therewith and has gone into possession of the same, he is said to be the owner and in the possession of the mining claim thus located.

(Trinity Gold Dredging & Hydraulic Co. vs. Beaudry, 223 Federal, 739, p. 741, May, 1915.)

MINING PARTNERSHIPS.

Joint Ownership and Operation.

Under the Civil Code of California (section 2511), a mining partnership exists when two or more persons who own or acquire a mining claim for the purpose of working it and extracting the minerals therefrom actually engage in working the same; but the actual working of the mine by the joint owners is essential to the mining partnership.

(Peterson vs. Beggs (California Appeals), 148 Pacific, 541, p. 542, March, 1915.)

EXTRACTS FROM BULLETIN No. 143, U. S. BUREAU OF MINES.

Mining Claims.

DISCOVERY.

Discovery Essential to Valid Location.

A location of a mining claim can not be made as against the government without the discovery of minerals within the limits of the claim.

(United States vs. Midway Northern Oil Co., 232 Federal, 619, p. 624.)

Liberal Construction of Statute.

In the matter of a discovery, the first essential to a valid location under the mining statutes, the extreme liberality of the courts in the construction and application of the statute has been manifested in hundreds of cases.

(Jim Butler-Tonopah Mining Co. vs. West End Consolidated Mining Co. (Nevada), 158 Pacific, 875, p. 880, June, 1916.)

VEIN.

Limestone Belt as a Vein.

A stratum of limestone through which a mineral streak containing ore bodies can be traced and with overlying and underlying beds of quartzite marking its limits and that can be followed on its bed through a network of openings from the apex to certain disputed ore bodies, is a vein within the meaning of the United States statutes granting extralateral rights.

(Wall vs. United States Mining Co., 232 Federal, 613, p. 615.)

SURFACE VEINS.

Effect of End Lines.

The end lines of a mining claim as the locator placed them, with the single exception of when by mistake he locates his claim across instead of along the discovered vein, fix the limit beyond which he may not go in the appropriation of any vein or veins whose apex or apexes are found within the surface lines of his claim, and the end lines of the original discovery vein are the end lines of all the veins discovered within the surface boundaries of his claim.

PATENTS.

Nature of Proceeding in Land Department.

The proceeding for a patent for a mining claim in the Land Department is judicial in its character, in the nature of a proceeding in rem, and its judgment by default where the proper notice of application has been given is as conclusive and impervious to collateral attack as its judgment after contest.

(Conkling Mining Co. vs. Silver King Coalition Mines Co., 230 Federal, 553, p. 559.)

Application-Compliance with Statute-Decision of Land Department. To entitle the locator of a mining claim to a patent he is required to locate the tract claimed, not exceeding 1,500 feet in length and 300 feet on each side of the vein, to file in the proper land office an application for a patent, together with a plat and field notes of the claim made by or under the direction of the surveyor general, showing the boundaries of the claim distinctly marked on the ground so they can be readily traced, to post a copy of such a plat with a notice of the application for patent on the claim, to file an affidavit of two persons that the notice was duly published 60 days, to file with the register of the Land Department a certificate of the surveyor general that $500 worth of labor had been expended in improvements on the claim and that the plat filed is correct, and to file his own affidavit that the plat and notice were posted on the claim. The question whether or not the applicant has sufficiently shown compliance with these and other conditions specified by the acts of Congress and is entitled to a patent, is the ultimate question which the Land Department is empowered and required to decide before the issuance of a patent for a mining claim.

EXTRACTS FROM BULLETIN No. 152, U. S. BUREAU OF MINES.

Mining Claims.

VEIN OR LODE.

Vein-What Constitutes.

A vein or lode comes within the meaning of the United States mining statutes so long as there is a fissure or gouge or any evidence of mineralization which will lead a practical miner from one ore body to another and which does in the course of his work so lead him.

(Alameda Mining Co. vs. Success Mining Co. (Idaho), 161 Pacific, 862,

p. 865.)