HISTOKY AND LEGAL BASIS. 39 



diyposition under the mineral or nonmineral land laws. Field ex- 

 amination has shown that certain lands so withdrawn are not val- 

 uable for their oil or gas deposits, and they have been promptly 

 restored to public entry. In one State, Utah, the surface of the 

 lands so withdrawn is open to agricultural entry. 



A number of bills providing for the disposal of oil and gas deposits 

 have been introduced in Congress, but none have yet been enacted 

 into law, so that the petroleum withdrawals continue in force and 

 new ones are being made as occasion arises. The need of the Xavy 

 for a supply of fuel oil has recently been more strongly recognized, 

 the battleships last authorized being designed to burn oil exclusively. 

 Fully to insure the Nation an adequate supply of fuel oil two naval 

 petroleum reserves aggregating, 68,249 acres and estimated to contain 

 at least 250,000,000 barrels of oil have been created in the San Joaquin 

 Valley fields of California, one under date of September 2, 1912, and 

 the second under date of December 13, 1912. 



PHOSPHATE I.A1IDS. 



Phosphate lands, like oil lands, are withdrawn because of the in- 

 adequacy of existing law to dispose of phosphate. Only within 

 comparatively recent years has it been known that important phos- 

 phate deposits exist on the public domain, but as soon as such de- 

 posits were discovered conflicts arose between entrymen under the 

 placer law and entrymen under the lode law. As a matter of fact 

 neither lode law nor placer law is fitted to phosphate deposits, which 

 occur as sedimentary beds interstratified with barren rocks in a 

 manner identical with that in which coal occurs. The placer law 

 provides for the disposition of all forms of deposit except rock in 

 place. The western phosphate deposits are clearly rock in place. 

 Moreover, some of them lie at great depth and are as difficult to mine 

 as coal or any other solid mineral. It is clear that the placer law is 

 not logically applicable to these deposits. Under the lode law a vein 

 which outcrops within the limits of a claim may be followed to in- 

 definite depths and distances so long as the end lines of the claim are 

 not crossed. A phosphate deposit is essentially an interstratified 

 bed, some deposits extending for many miles and being involved in 

 great folds and undulations. The application of the apex law to 

 such deposits would assuredly result in great confusion. For in- 

 stance, if two sets or series of lode claims are located along the Cat- 

 crop of a bed of phosphate that occupies a geologic basin and 

 outcrops around its margin, one set of claimants on one side, the other 

 on the opposite side, each set of claimants might be entitled to the 

 bed throughout its extent from outcrop to outcrop. Thus the same 

 property might be disposed of to two separate claimants, each of 

 whom would have a good title. It is obvious that the lode law, under 



