INTRODUCTION. XXV 
which, if anywhere, it should have been possible for the original locators 
so clearly to define their ore body as to avoid such disputes as these, which 
so seriously detract from its value. A perusal of the following pages will 
show, however, that it was utterly impossible for anyone to foretell from 
the surface indications what would be the form and position of these bodies 
in depth; and further, that while the inference that it was a deposit follow- 
ing a contact or bedding plane between two sedimentary beds was a proper 
and just one from surface indications, this contact is in reality a fault and 
not a single bedding plane; and that the ore has been deposited in this 
portion of the district, not along any single plane, but by waters following 
a complicated system of faults of constantly varying strike and dip, which 
it was utterly impossible to define in accordance with the terms of the 
United States mining law; and that the only possible way of defining 
the claim to such ore bodies is by vertical side lines, irrespective of the 
form or direction that the ore body may take in depth, a method to which 
the mine owners inevitably come in the long run, whether by compromise 
beforehand or after they have wasted their means in the enormous expenses 
inevitably attendant upon such lawsuits. In the other case quoted by Mr. 
Brunton, where there could be no outcrops of the ore bodies whatever, the 
hill being deeply covered with gravel and wash, the great skill exercised 
by the engineers employed by the mines and the acumen shown by the 
learned judge, who is famed for his knowledge and correct understanding 
of ore deposits, in explaining the two questions in dispute, did not result 
in a verdict that is strictly in accordance with the facts, for the present 
investigations have shown that the fault in question must have been 
formed prior to the deposition of the ore, but that movement on it has 
continued since that deposition, a condition of things that the law has not 
and could not have foreseen. 
The conditions attendant upon the deposition of ore bodies in general 
are found to be more and more complicated as accurate studies of them 
progress, and they are not found to be identical in any two mining districts. 
It is therefore an inherent impossibility so to frame the definition of an ore 
deposit, if the owner is allowed to go outside of his surface boundaries 
vertically projected, that it will not give rise to litigation in a vast number 
of cases, or work great injustice to a large proportion of claim owners. 
