Mr. CONNESS. I will explain as briefly as I can. When the title of a grantee or petitioner is confirmed it is never confirmed to any particular land, but to a given quantity, a given number of le ues, within certain bound aries that are name in the original expediente or grant made by the Mexican Government to the party. After that, it becomes another and separate question as to where, within those exterior bounds or limits, the given number of leagues confirmed shall be located; and under a former law of Congress that duty was devolved upon the surveyor general for the Government in California, who would go for ward and make a plat, usually starting to make the quantity from whatever residence or location there had been made upon the ground, he being required, under the law, to make the location of land as nearly as possible in a compact body. Then the plat of the surveyor general was sent up to the Land Office, and if approved by the Commissioner, a patent issued to the grantee for that specific descriptive quantity of land. Subsequently the law was changed and it was ordered that these questions of survey should be appealable from the act of the surveyor general to the U.S. district court for the district, and thence to the SCOTUS, and subsequently again the law was changed and remanded back to its former position, and that is the law now. The object of this amendment is simply to comel the grantees who have had their claims conrmed, and then their surveys confirmed in addition to have the survey made so that the snYplus land Shall be added to the public do main. Under the laws and the decisions of the courts in the State of California, until the segregation is made, the grantee may commence proceedings in our State courts and dispossess every person who may occupy any portion of the surplus land. A resolutiOn was passed by the last Legislature of California asking that a provision of this kind should be enacted so as to compel the survey of these grants that the public might know what was private and what was public land. Asbetween this amendment and the language for which it is substituted, it is a mere choice of words and I have no objection to either form of expression.