Page:Federal Reporter, 1st Series, Volume 8.djvu/407

 FUSSELL V. HUGHES. 393 �before March 3, 1857, or entries made on or before January 1, 1852, and founded on unsatisfied Virginia military continenal warrants, are hereby declared valid." �The third section of the act of March 23, 1804, — the first of this series of statutes, — was not repeated in any subsequent l&w, but it was not repealed or modified ; and although it verbally refers to the limitations of that particular act as making the release therein declared, it is not to be considered as having become inoperative by the expiration of the times limited in the act. On the contrary, all the subsequent statutes extending the period of time for making valid entries, surveys, and retums of surveys, so as to entitle the party to a patent, are to be taken as reviving the entire law, inoltiding the third section, as if the latter had been incorporated with eaeh' new enactment; for the whole series is necessarily oonnected by thelden- tity of its subject-matter, and must be taken and construed as' though there was but one statute, so that the consequences of a failure to take the steps required to procure a patent within the periods from time to time limited, prescribed in the third section of the act of 1804, must be understood as following and applying to each succes- sive extension of the time of grace. �This conclusion is strengthened by the language used in the act of July, 1838, confirming entries and surveys made in the interim be- tween June 1, 1832, and the passage of that aot, during which, as has been shown, the limitation which barred them had become com- plete. That language is that such entries and surveys "shall be held good and valid, any omission heretofore to extend the time for the making of such entries and surveys to the contrary notwithstanding. " Such language would not have been thought necessary, except upon the theory that, without it, all such entries and surveys would have been'void. So, too, it is manifest by the act of March 3, 1865, and of May 27, 1880, which extends the time for making and returning surveys until March 3, 1857, but on entries only that had been made prior to January 1, 1852, that since the last-mentioned date all entries and surveys made prior thereto are vacated, annulled, and made void. so that they cannot lawf ully serve as the basis of patents ; the land covered by them lapsing into the general body of public lands of the United States, to be dispoaed of according to the laws in force in respect thereto, and no longer constituting any portion of the Virginia military reservation of bounty lanJs. �That conclusion, adopted and applied to the present case, is fatal to the complainant's claim, as it takes away from her all foundation ��� �