48 MICHIGAN STATE AGRICULTURAL COLLEGE 



said, we began as a society of surveyors. Numerous problems 

 were discussed of which there were no solutions in the textbooks 

 on surveying. Most of them were questions of law and not 

 of mathematics or of the use of instruments. The very first 

 thing the society did was to appoint a committee whose duty 

 was to prepare a Manual which should give authoritative 

 answers to all these questions. The committee spent all their 

 spare time for six years preparing and getting out the book. 

 They studied up every decision of the Supreme Court of the 

 United States and every decision of the courts of the several 

 states bearing on the location of boundary lines. The outcome 

 of the labors of the committee was A Manual of Land Surveying, 

 which came out in 1886 and is now in its fourteenth edition. 

 It is the standard authority in the United States land department 

 and all over the United States on the subjects of which it treats. 

 Since its first issue a number of textbooks on surveying have 

 been written and published, but there is not one of the whole 

 lot which has not taken some portion of its matter from this 

 book. More than one supreme court decision in recent years 

 has been made in language taken from it, and many another 

 court has found in its pages the authorities on which to base a 

 decision. About the time the book was pubUshed, the supreme 

 court of Michigan gave its decision in the boundary case of 

 Wilson vs. Hoffman, in which it was stated that the court 

 followed the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States 

 in the case of Brown's lessees vs. Clements. The Michigan 

 decision was criticized in the society and it was shown that the 

 Brown^s lessees vs. Clements decision had been reversed years 

 ago by the same court which made it, in another suit over the 

 very same boundary line, as not being good law nor in accord- 

 ance with the settled practice of the land department in the 

 sale of the public lands. When this criticism reached the 

 Michigan judges, they promptly, of their own motion, recalled 

 the Wilson vs. Hoffman case and reversed their own decision. 



