able from the geological standpoint are without adequate railroad facilities. Transportation costs become exorbitant when all materials, supplies and fuel must be hauled by auto or team over poor roads, possibly fifty to one hundred miles from the railroads. In many cases roads must be built and maintained and even the water needed for drilling must be hauled many miles. Under such conditions, development is seriously handicapped not only because of the high cost of drilling, but also because of the exorbitant cost of marketing the oil produced.

Operating Requirements.-The requirements of drilling and operating and the royalties stipulated by the leases may be of such a nature as to destroy the attractiveness of a promising acreage. Legitimate concerns will not sign contracts to drill twenty wells on a wild cat structure, neither will they pay 40 per cent. royalty. One eighth royalty is the accepted standard established as the basis of a fair working agreement between the producer and the property owner. High royalties quickly destroy the margin of profit to the producer. The incentive is to speed up production and to abandon the property before it is really exhausted. This results in an economic loss to the nation and, portentially, in a financial loss to the operating company and the land owner. The drilling of wells and the production of oil is a legitimate business activity. Experience has established principles of conduct and conditions of operation which can not be violated without incurring the danger of bankruptcy.

Legal Status of Land.-Operators should assure themselves that the title to the land is clear and valid. All conflicting titles, no matter how flimsy, should be settled preceding development. After discovery of oil in commercial quantities, these can probably not be settled except by expensive and perhaps drawn out litigation.

Title of much of the prospective oil land in the West comes direct from the government in the form of oil placer claims. In many cases a number of different claimants have located the same

* For a comprehensive discussion of the oil placer law see: Ball, Max W., Trans. Amer. Inst. Min. Eng., Feb. 1914, 929-948.

acreage. In these cases it requires the nicest of legal acumen to determine the valid title. It appears to be the consensus of opinion that the claimant first discovering oil in commercial quantities has best title.

Much of the land is homestead land taken up by the agricultural claimant under a specific waiver of mineral rights which are expressly reserved to the government subject to future legislation. Leases from the homesteader appear therefore to be invalid. Oil placer claims are frequently filed over such homesteads with or without the consent of the homesteader. Their status is doubtful, although the title may be the best obtainable under the present conditions.

Much of the government land in the West will be leased directly from the government on a royalty basis, subject to certain limitations as to the area of land so obtainable.

DENVER,

COLORADO.

EDITORIAL

GEOLOGY IN THE LAW.

In the early discovery and development of the mining resources of the West, the individual camps shaped their own rules affecting the nature and size of claims, the formalities of registration and the security of titles. Great variety inevitably sprang up. Gold was practically the one metal sought, and miners were divided into placer miners and quartz miners. The latter felt much pride in their calling and were the aristocracy of the fraternity.

When peace came after the strife of the Civil War, Congress felt at once the importance of encouraging in a liberal way the development of the western region, and addressed itself to codifying and systematizing the laws affecting discovery and ownership. The titles already existing, and the validity of customs, however variant, were recognized and established. For new locations in the national domain a uniform system was adopted in1866, was finally revised in 1872, and was placed in the form in which it stands to-day. Claims were to be 1,500 feet long by 600 feet wide, with parallel end lines. The grants were to cover "the exclusive right of possession and enjoyment of all the surface included within the lines of their locations, and of all veins, lodes, and ledges throughout their entire depth, the top or apex of which lies inside of such surface lines, extended downward vertically, although such veins, lodes, or ledges may so far depart from a perpendicular in their course downward as to extend outside the vertical side lines of such surface locations. But their right of possession to such outside parts of such veins or ledges shall be confined to such portions thereof, as lie between vertical planes drawn downward as above described, through the end lines of their locations, so continued in their own direction, that such planes will intersect such exterior parts of such veins and ledges."

The Senators and Congressmen who formulated the statute were not themselves mining geologists, although had they wished,

they could have called and possibly they did call, upon the exceptional talent which was available even as early as 1866. J. D. Whitney whose incomparable "Metallic Wealth of the United States" had appeared in 1854, was in his full tide of work in California. W. P. Blake had then been studying western mines for sixteen years. There were others, of extended experience, whose advice was not beyond reach. In the interval between 1866 and 1872 Frederick Prime, Jr., a graduate of the justly famous Mining Academy at Freiberg, had translated and published in New York in 1870 Von Cotta's Ore Deposits. R. W. Raymond, another Freiberger had already been for four years Commissioner of Mining Statistics West of the Rocky Mountains and had formulated a proposed bill. One or more Schools of Mines or Courses in Mining had been established for some years before 1872 and from the lecture desk of one, J. S. Newberry, who had had both university training in Paris and many years experience in the West was expounding the geological relations of ores.

The formulators of the statute, however, had their minds focused on the prospector and the miner, rather than on the geologist and the scientific man. They obviously meant to embody in the law the very general and not sharply defined conceptions of the prospector and miner, and to generously assure to the former the full reward for his privations in the wilderness. After the passage of the statute in 1872, less than four years elapsed before the now famous dispute arose at Eureka, Nevada, over the ownership of replacement bodies of silved-lead ore in limestone and over the extent of extra-lateral rights. We find Justice Field, in his decision, specifically rejecting the text book and the geologists' definition of a vein or lode; and interpreting the statute in accordance with the conceptions of the miner. The meaning of lode on the analogy with lode-stone and lode-star was interpreted as a continuous body of mineralized rock, lying between bound-• aries and of such a nature as would lead the miner on in his reasonable expectation of finding ore. Possibly only a few of the readers of this magazine may have actually seen Justice Field's

full opinion1 which was corroborated by all the higher Federal Courts up to and including the U. S. Supreme Court. A selection from it is given below. Justice Field states:

"The use of the terms vein and lode in connection with each other in the act of 1866, and their use in connection with the term ledge in the act of 1872, would seem to indicate that it was the object of the legislator to avoid any limitation, in the application of the acts, which a scientific definition of any of these terms might impose.

"It is difficult to give any definition of the term, as understood and used in the acts of Congress, which will not be subject to criticism. A fissure in the earth's crust, an opening in its rocks and strata made by some force of nature, in which the mineral is deposited, would seem to be essential to the definition of lode, in the judgment of the geologists. But to the practical miner the fissure and its walls are only of importance as indicating the boundaries within which he may look for and reasonably expect to find the ore he seeks. A continuous body of mineralized rock lying within any other well-defined boundaries on the earth's surface and under it, would equally constitute, in his eyes, a lode. We are of opinion, therefore, that the term as used in the acts of Congress is applicable to any zone or belt of mineralized rock lying within boundaries clearly separating it from neighboring rock. It includes, to use the language cited by counsel, a deposit of mineral matter, found through a mineralized zone or belt, coming from the same source, impressed with the same forms, and appearing to have been created by the same processes."

This decision of Justice Field, fully corroborated by all the higher courts pointed the way for other decisions which have followed and is justly esteemed as a classic by the legal fraternity. Every geologist, however, of wide experience with replacement ore-bodies underground, will readily grasp the difficulty of establishing any general and universal rule for the boundaries of a lode. If we deal with one or more inclined limestone strata, each between well defined walls, and affected by replacement, there is little difficulty in establishing hanging-walls and foot-walls, but it may be a matter of great difficulty for the court to decide where, on strike or dip, with waning mineralization a stratum.

1 It may be found in works on mining law, notably C. H. Shamel, “Mining, Mineral and Geological Law," pp. 169-173. Also in the reports of cases. 9 Morr. M. Rep. 578, 4 Sawyer, 302.