certified that an application has been made, and that the certificate is liable to the warrant demanded. Warrants of resurvey, and of escheat, in respect to which no previous payment to the treasurer is requisite, come simply under the general rule of being grantable to the first applicant. According to the usage of the office, particularly as established in some instances by the late register, an oral application is preferred to one in writing; that is to say, if two persons appear together in the office, and while one offers a paper, containing an application, the other makes and specifies his demand aloud, the latter has the preference, as the matter of his application comes first to the knowledge of the register: but this rule does not preclude written applications, where the register has had time to inform himself of their contents before verbal applications are made, nor even where the reading of them should be anticipated by verbal demands, if he has them in his hands in the land office. In a case above alluded to, the register, seeing two persons enter the office evidently in contest for the first application, refused to take a paper offered him by one of them, and attended to the verbal application of the other, who accordingly obtained a warrant; and in a similar case the same course would be now observed: but where no struggle of this kind obliges the register to act exclusively upon what he hears, written applications for warrants, either delivered or transmitted, are effectual, though certainly subject to casualties, which must be at the risk of those who make them. In regard to the entry on the titling book, which is the first thing done after a regular application, it contains the substance of the warrant, and is, by usage, effectual, although the warrant should not immediately be made out; but no entry is made without being followed by a warrant of the same date. Applications were formerly permitted to lie three months, during which the party had the option of taking his warrant or not. By what regulation this custom obtained I have not observed, and therefore omitted to notice it in my account of the ancient practice, towards the close of which, only, it is perceived to have occurred; but this privilege has ceased since the land office became regulated by law.     The next matter to be noticed is the correction of errors in warrants, (and previously in the titling book) before they are recorded, for afterwards no correction or alteration, of material import, can be made; and, the licence of the office in this particular does not go very far even before recording: but, while warrants remain in this state, the register corrects a casual error alledged to be his own, or a slight error of the party, in the naming of lands, &c. always confining such corrections to what was evidently intended in taking out the