though the lands granted to the Atlantic and Pacific had been identified in 1866, and title had then passed, and there never was a title of any kind vested in the Southern Pacific Company.
And whatever of plausibility there might be in this suggestion of counsel, based upon the old common law rules in respect to the effect of a lack of identification upon attempted conveyances between private parties, it fails entirely because its map of definite location was not filed by the Southern Pacific Company until long after the filing by the Atlantic and Pacific Company. It is true that the bills of complaint in these cases allege that "said Southern Pacific Railroad Company accepted said grant, and on April 3, 1871, did designate the line of its55. The act under consideration in that case was that of July 2, 1864, 13 Stat. 365, making a grant to the Northern Pacific Railroad Company. The third section of that act, as the third of this, made the grant, and provided for the line of definite location. Section 6 authorized the fixing of the general route, and its language in respect to that matter is the same as that of section 6 of the act before us. It reads: "That the President of the United States shall cause the lands to be surveyed for forty miles in width on both sides of the entire line of said road, after the general route shall be fixed, and as fast as may be required by the construction of said