308 CUNNINGHAM v. BROWNING.—1 BLAND.

In the various instances put of describing the general situation;
of referring to some spot or point comprehended by the tract; or
to the particular line, or corner, or extremity of the tract to which
the vacancy is contiguous, and of such a description being bind-
ing to a certain extent; it is not said, nor is it perceived to what
extent the binding effect of the description wrould be allowed to
go; nor even if that could be settled, is it perceived how the fact
of such obligatory extent is to be ascertained and proved. It is
certain that parol proof is wholly inadmissible for any such pur-
pose. Beatty v. Orendorf, Land Ho. Ass. 402. It has been sol-
emnly declared, that a warrant for one hundred acres, contiguous
to a tract, of which the outlines are altogether twenty miles in
length, cannot be thought to give an exclusive right to survey any
one hundred acres contiguous to that extensive tract. Beatty v.
Orendorf, Land Ho. Ass. 401. And it has been laid down with
great attention as a rule, that if an angle of one tract runs up to
or touches an angle, or even a side of another tract, there is HO
contiguity between that other tract and the land contained within
the two lines forming the angle. Whitford v. Jones, Lund Ho.
Ass. 413.

taken as uncultivated, and liable to be affected by a common warrant, and
it will be observed, that two of the certificates returned by the caveator on
his warrant, supposed to include the same land, are for uncultivated land,
and the improvements on the other three are only a few fence logs.

It was stated in the argument, that the warrant was not a proper one—
that it was neither a special nor a common warrant. But, although it was
not simply a common warrant, yet it might be used as such, and the general
tenor of special warrants was, and still is, to direct the surveyor to lay out
the said quantity, be the same cultivated or otherwise. On this subject the
following points appear to have been settled:—That a special warrant shall
be allowed to do everything which a common warrant might do;—that a
special warrant may abandon its first intention, and may be used to affect
any lands which may be affected by a common warrant, however distant
they may be from the land described in the special warrant; and that, in
such case, it makes no difference whether or not the survey under a special
warrant includes part of the land designated by the special warrant. It is
well known that a common warrant binds or affects the land at the time of
its location with the surveyor, and a fortiori, it must bind at the time of the
actual surveys which, in these cases, was many years before the date of the
caveator's warrant.

The application of the above principles to the matter in dispute, being
sufficient for its decision, it will not be necessary to remark on some other
grounds of defence which were urged by the counsel for Good win. But,
with regard to the opinion of Mr. Callahan, the late register, concerning the
certificates now oaveated, as stated in the depositions of Oliver Cromwell,
it is thought proper to declare explicitly, that such evidence of the opinions
of that officer can have no possible influence in any case now to be decided.

It is adjudged and ordered that the aforesaid caveats be dismissed with
costs.