the specific manner described in the field notes, and that the foregoing are the original field notes of such survey. It is noted that the form of certificate of assistants, final oath of surveyor, and your approval, Form 4-679, may be followed, slightly modified, for these surveys. 36. Plats will be prepared on drawing paper at least equal in weight and quality to that in current use for plats of mineral surveys, on sheets of the size and with border prescribed for regular township plats, and to a suitably large scale in each case. The title may be brief and substantially as follows, for instance: Plat of Homestead Entry Survey No. 506 in the Battlement National Forest in Section 30 (unsurveyed), T. 11 S., R. 93 W. and Section 25 (surveyed). T. 11 S., R. 94 W. of the Sixth Principal Meridian 37. In addition to the entry survey in detail, with its associated retracements and resurveys designated as such, section subdivisions, and connections, all "strictly conformable" to the field notes, the plat will also indicate near-by surveys, claims, and important topography. 38. If in a surveyed section, section subdivisions should be shown on the plat to an extent sufficient to indicate remainders of legal subdivisions invaded by the entry survey, but without areas and without lot numbers other than those already appearing on the plat of regular survey. After the entry has passed to patent, its survey and segregations created thereby will be shown with other patented areas on township plats subsequently prepared; and in these cases small portions of legal subdivisions consequent on segregations of patented mineral claims, that may be included in adjacent lots created by the entry survey, should be included if the resulting lot is of proper form and area. (See p. 74 of Manual of 1902.) 39. The status of surveys and protractions should be definitely stated on the plat; for instance, as patented, accepted, suspended, surveyed, unapproved, etc., as the case may be. 40. On the plat unsurveyed section lines will be indicated by broken lines, if their positions can be protracted with reasonable certainty. Surveyed section lines will be full, with courses and distances as of record, retraced, or restored. Mineral and other surveys may be shown in full lines, with corner numbers when advisable. Unsurveyed mineral or other claims, also section subdivision lines, will be dotted. The entry survey boundaries will be full and relatively heavier. Lines should be appropriate in character and lettering simple in style and distinctive in size and form for the matters represented, that the plat may be correctly and easily read. Single-stroke letters and figures, not shaded, are preferred, to the exclusion of vertical and Roman forms. Also see figures IX-4, and IX-5, pages 43 and 45, respectively, of the chapter on plats of the revised manual of 1928. this office is desired, the letter of inquiry should always contain a description of the particular corner, with reference to the township, range, and section of the public surveys, to enable this office to consult the record. 2. An obliterated corner is one where no visible evidence remains of the work of the original surveyor in establishing it. Its location may, however, have been preserved beyond all question by acts of landowners, and by the memory of those who knew and recollect the true situs of the original monument. In such cases it is not a lost corner. A lost corner is one whose position can not be determined, beyond reasonable doubt, either from original marks or reliable external evidence. Surveyors sometimes err in their decision whether a corner is to be treated as lost or only obliterated. 3. Surveyors who have been United States deputies should bear in mind that in their private capacity they must act under somewhat different rules of law from those governing original surveys, and should carefully distinguish between the provisions of the statute which guide a Government deputy and those which apply to retracement of lines once surveyed. The failure to observe this distinction has been prolific of erroneous work and injustice to landowners. 4. To restore extinct boundaries of the public lands correctly, the surveyor must have some knowledge of the manner in which townships were subdivided by the several methods authorized by Congress. Without this knowledge he may be greatly embarrassed in the field, and is liable to make mistakes invalidating his work, and leading eventually to serious litigation. 5. Various regions of this country were surveyed under different sets of instructions issued at periods ranging from 1785 to the present time. The earliest rules were given to deputy surveyors in manuscript or in printed circulars, and no copies are available for distribution. Regulations more in detail, improving the system for greater accuracy and permanency, were issued in book form, editions of 1855, 1871, 1890, 1894, and 1902. The supply of copies of these is exhausted, except the latest, which is now sold at cost to unofficial applicants by the Superintendent of Documents. 6. The chief acts of Congress authorizing and regulating publicland surveys are summarized below to enable anyone to consult the full record thereof for explanation of difficult questions regarding early surveys. 7. Compliance with the provisions of congressional legislation at different periods has resulted in two sets of corners being established on township lines at one time; at other times three sets of corners have been established on range lines; while the system now in operation makes but one set of corners on township boundaries, except on standard lines-i. e., base and correction lines, and in some exceptional cases. The following brief explanation of the modes which have been practiced will be of service to all who may be called upon to restore obliterated boundaries of the public-land surveys: Where two sets of corners were established on township boundaries, one set was planted at the time the exteriors were run, those on the north boundary belonging to the sections and quarter sections north of said line, and those on the west boundary belonging to the sections and quarter sections west of that line. The other set of corners was established when the township was subdivided. This method, as stated, resulted in the establishment of two sets of corners on all four sides of the townships. Where three sets of corners were established on the range lines, the subdivisional surveys were made in the above manner, except that the east and west section lines, instead of being closed upon the corners previously established on the east boundary of the township, were run due east from the last interior section corner, and new corners were erected at the points of intersection with the range line. 8. The method now in practice, where regular conditions are found, requires section lines to be initiated at the corners on the south boundary of the township, and to close on existing corners on the east, north, and west boundaries of the township, except that when the north boundary is a base line or standard parallel, new corners are set thereon, called closing corners. But in some cases, for special reasons, an opposite course of procedure has been followed, and subdivisional work has been begun on the north boundary and has been extended southward. 9. For the above reasons it is evident that a subsequent surveyor ought not to perform field work without knowing all the facts of the original survey, lest there be unsuspected duplication of official corners, leading him to use the wrong one in his survey. Upon township and range lines it is often necessary to procure copies of the plats of surveys on both sides, in order to become certain of the necessary understanding of the case, as required in section 57 of this circular. A great many township plats fail to show the second set of corners, established in the survey of an adjoining township, subsequent to the plat of the former township. 10. In the more recent general instructions greater care has been exercised to secure rectangular subdivisions by fixing a strict limitation that no new township exteriors or section lines shall depart from a true meridian or east and west line more than 21 minutes of arc; and that where a random line is found liable to correction beyond this limit, a true line on a cardinal course must be run, setting a closing corner on the line to which it closes. This produces, in new surveys closing to irregular old work, a great number of exteriors marked by a double set of corners. All retracing surveyors should proceed under these new conditions with full knowledge of the field notes and exceptional methods of subdivision. SYNOPSIS OF ACTS OF CONGRESS 11. The first enactment in regard to the surveying of the public lands was an ordinance passed by the Congress of the Confederation May 20, 1785, prescribing the mode for the survey of the "Western Territory," and which provided that said territory should be divided into "townships of 6 miles square, by lines running due north and south, and others crossing them at right angles" as near as might be. proof, for posting on the claim as required by the act of 1906; this purpose will be stated in your letter of transmittal. When the triplicate plat is transmitted, you will notify the district forester thereof. 52. With your letter transmitting transcript field notes and duplicate plat, you will inclose copies of any supplimental instructions you may have issued. And when such instructions are requested by the district forester, concerning which you are in doubt, you will submit to this office a full statement of conditions affecting the question presented and await advice. 53. The cooperative procedure above instructed has relation only to listing surveys intended as bases for individual entries. It does not apply to surveys for listings of larger metes-and-bounds tracts or tracts involving the extension of the regular system. 54. By the stated act of March 4, 1913, the unexpended balance of the appropriation of $35,000, for the current fiscal year, and a similar appropriation for the ensuing fiscal year, will be available also for surveys of lands already listed within national forests. In respect of such listings and entries based thereon, your attention is directed to section 25 hereof and the construction therein stated of the statutory 1-mile limit. All instructions of this office inconsistent therewith are hereby recalled. 55. After June 30, 1913, such surveys by metes and bounds-that is, lands already listed-as are intended for use at final proof under the act of 1906, will be made by employees of the Forest Service under your direction and these regulations. This rule applies also to metes-and-bounds entries of lands which, since entry, are exempted from national forests, where the entryman is not, within the statutory final-proof period, allowed to amend his entry to conform to the usual legal subdivisions. Surveys amendatory of existing listings, intended as bases for individual entries, including those to be bases for allowable amendments of entries already made, are sufficiently covered by preceding sections. Surveys for final proof on entries based or to be based on listings not made under the cooperation plan of the acts of 1912 and 1913 will be subject to the following additional regulations; namely, such surveys can embrace only listed and opened lands. They must therefore be restricted to or within the boundaries of such lands as marked on the ground, or if not marked, to or within the boundaries intended by the Forest Service in the listing. That this restriction is observed, and how, should specifically appear in the field notes, with identifying descriptions of listing corners as found, and bearings and distances thereto when. for proper reasons, their positions are not occupied by entry survey corners. The listing corners have served their legitimate purpose when the tract is identified, and should be destroyed after positions are noted, the facts being recorded in the field notes. The fact of entry will not require change in forms prescribed in section 35c, supra, of field notes, plats, affidavits, and approval; but the fact should be briefly mentioned in the preamble of the field notes, with name of entryman, local land office, serial, and date. 56. Applications from entrymen for metes-and-bounds surveys of their entries, received at your office subsequent to June 30, 1913, will 14. The act approved June 1, 1796, "regulating the grants of land appropriated for military services," etc., provided for dividing the "United States Military Tract," in the State of Ohio, into townships 5 miles square, each to be subdivided into quarter townships containing 4,000 acres. 15. Section 6 of the act approved March 1, 1800, amendatory of the foregoing act, enacted that the Secretary of the Treasury was authorized to subdivide the quarter townships into lots of 100 acres, bounded as nearly as practicable by parallel lines 160 perches in length by 100 perches in width. These subdivisions into lots, however, were made upon the plats in the office of the Secretary of the Treasury, and the actual survey was only made at a subsequent time when a sufficient number of such lots had been located to warrant the survey. It thus happened, in some instances, that when the survey came to be made the plat and survey could not be made to agree, and that fractional lots on plats were entirely crowded out. A knowledge of this fact may explain some of the difficulties met with in the district thus subdivided. 16. The act of greatest importance to the work of all retracing surveyors is the one approved February 11, 1805, which is still in force, as reenacted by revision in 1874. It directs the subdivision of public lands into quarter-sections, and sets forth three principles for ascertaining the boundaries and contents of tracts of public land, after survey, in substance as follows: 17. (a) All corners marked in the surveys returned by the surveyor-general shall be established as the proper corners of the sections or quarter-sections which they were intended to designate, and corners of half and quarter sections not marked shall be placed as nearly as possible "equidistant from those two corners which stand on the same line." 18. (b) "The boundary lines actually run and marked" (in the field) "shall be established as the proper boundary lines of the sections, or subdivisions, for which they were intended, and the length of such lines as returned by either of the surveyors aforesaid shall be held and considered as the true length thereof. And the boundary lines which shall not have been actually run and marked as aforesaid shall be ascertained by running straight lines from the established corners to the opposite corresponding corners, but in those portions of the fractional townships where no such opposite or corresponding corners have been or can be fixed, the said boundary lines shall be ascertained by running from the established corners due north and south" (see secs. 67 and 79), " or east and west lines, as the case may be, to the water course, Indian boundary line, or other external boundary of such fractional township." 19. (c) "Each section, or subdivision of section, the contents whereof shall have been returned by the surveyor general, shall be held and considered as containing the exact quantity expressed in such return; and the half sections and quarter sections, the contents whereof shall not have been thus returned, shall be held and considered as containing the one-half or the one-fourth part, respecttively, of the returned contents of the section of which they may make part." 20. These three principles were clearly designed for the purpose of establishing beyond dispute all lines and monuments of accepted |