260 THE RAIL ROAD v. HOYE.

land office, or none now to be found there on questions arising out
of any state of things similar to that presented by these caveats.

It was contended, on the part of the Rail Road Company, that
an assistant surveyor is only prohibited from receiving and entering
the description of the location of a common warrant; but that he
may receive the warrant and execute it without its being first de-
livered into the hands of the surveyor.

But it is clear, that all common warrants must be first lodged
with the principal surveyor of the county before his assistant can
be permitted to execute them in any way whatever. The second
article explicitly requires four things to be entered and noted in
the surveyor's book in all such cases. First, the time of receiving
the warrant; second, the quantity of acres included therein; third,
the date thereof; and fourth, at what place the person who obtains
it locates the same. The three first of these notations are peremp-
torily required in all cases; but the last, it is evident, from its na-
ture, and the express language of the rule itself, can only be made
' when any person desires to locate a warrant.' The restriction
imposed upon assistant surveyors, by the nineteenth article, in the
clearest terms, embraces all four of these notations; it is declared,
that ' no assistant shall presume to receive or enter the location of
any warrant whatever.' The one book in which all these entries
are directed to be made, is to be kept by the surveyor; he alone,
therefore, can make them, and produce that book to all other hold-
ers of warrants, who may come to have them entered and located
on lands to which they may wish to acquire a right of pre-emption
from that date, by giving and entering a special description of
them. The obvious and expressly declared intention of these re-
gulations is, ' to prevent all disputes about the priority of entries
or locations of land.' But this object could not be attained, if the
principal and assistant were each allowed to receive entries and
locations, each of which was to be considered as equally available;
nor could any one ascertain, from a view of the books and pro-
ceedings of either the principal or assistant surveyor alone, whether
any other person had already entered a warrant to affect the land
he wished to obtain.

I am therefore, satisfied, that although every survey must be

dated on the day on which it was actually made; yet, in this

instance, the survey of Clara Fisher, having been improvidently

and erroneously made by the assistant, before the warrant had

been lodged with and properly noted by the principal surveyor in