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the eno:ineer's office. The superintendent takes this map with him 

 when taking; tostimony, and is in tliis way a])le to assist chiimaiits in 

 makinti; out their statements correctl}-. The map is submitted to 

 claimants and acknowledgment of its correctness secured from them, 

 makinp: it a part of tlieir testimony. Even with this precaution many 

 mistakes were made in describino; lands, and these mistakes often 

 were carried throuo;h into the final certificates, necessitating the cor- 

 rection of these when tlie mistakes came to lisht later. To avoid this, 

 it has been found necessary" to go further and locate each tract under 

 the ditches surveyed and mapped. In 1904 the system of making 

 surveys was changed somewhat. A plane table of special design was 

 adopted and the superintendent assists in making the surveys. P^acli 

 irrigated tract is shown on the map, and the superintendent takes the 

 testimony as the survey progresses. In this way there is little oppor- 

 tunit}^ for mistake in land descriptions, since misstatements will be 

 caught at once and corrected before the survey proceeds. There has 

 been anotlier change in practice in the interests of accuracy. Origi- 

 nally the superintendent received testimony at stated places, })ut the 

 new system takes him among the people, reducing the chance of 

 errors. 



Each claimant is now rec^uircd to pay to the superintendent at the 

 time of submitting his testimony SI. 75 — the fees to the State engineer 

 for issuing a certificate and to the county clerk for recording it. Before 

 this law was passed many owners did not call for their certificates, 

 avoiding the payment of the fees and rendering the county records 

 incomplete. The payment of the fees in advance corrects this practice. 



After completing the taking of testimony the superintendent gives 

 published and written notice of the time and place where it will be 

 open to inspection. 



When the testimony" is opened to inspection any interested party 

 may contest any claims made. Most of the parties inspect the state- 

 ments of others, and there is considerable informal correcting and 

 getting together on points of difTerence without regular contests. The 

 law originally provided that the contestant might fix the time and 

 place for the hearing on his contest, but this did not work well. Par- 

 ties wishing to block the adjudication would file contests and then fail 

 to set a date for hearing them, thus tying up the whole proceeding. 

 Now the superintendent sets the time. He serves upon each inter- 

 ested party a written notice of this hearing, either by mail or in person, 

 and secures from them a waiver of any other service. 



After hearing all contests the superintendent transmits to the board 

 of control all statements of claim and all testimony taken in hearing 

 contests. Before the meeting of the board at which this is passed 

 upon the superintendent tabulates the results, and if there have been 

 no contests the board usually instructs its secretary to issue certificates 



