Megerle

— The plaintiff claims title under a patent issued to him by the United States, and the defendants claim under a patent issued to David S. Terry by the state of California.

The facts, so far as material, are substantially as follows:

The plaintiff settled upon the quarter section of land in controversy in 1850, and continued to reside there with his family until 1860, when he was forced to leave by high water. Prior to that time he had entered the quarter section in the proper United States land office and obtained a certificate of purchase therefor. The township including the land in question was surveyed in the field in May and June, 1855, and the plat of survey, properly certified by the surveyor general, was forwarded to the office of the register at Marysville on the fourth day of December, 1855, and received in that office on the fifth day of the same month. No notice of the return of the plat was given until the 15th of February, 1856, when a notice was published in a Marysville newspaper by the officers of the Marysville land office, notifying settlers in the township that it was necessary for them to file their declaratory statements on or before the fifteenth day of…