Mineral

adj. Relating to minerals or the process and business of mining; bearing or producing valuable minerals.

— Mineral district. A term occasionally used in acts of congress, designating in a general way those portions or regions of the country where valuable minerals are mostly found, or where the business of mining is chiefly carried on, but carrying no very precise meaning and not a known term of the law. See U. S. v. Smith (C. O.) 11 Fed. 490.

— Mineral lands. See LAND.

— Mineral land entry. See Entry.

n. Any valuable inert or lifeless substance formed or deposited in its present position through natural agencies alone, and which is found either in or upon the soil of the earth or in the rocks beneath the soil. Barringer & Adams, Mines, p. lxxvi. Any natural constituent of the crust of the earth, inorganic or fossil, homogeneous in structure, having a definite chemical composition and known crystallization. See Webster; Cent. Diet. The term includes ail fossil bodies or matters dug out of mines or quarriee, whence anything may be dug, such as beds of stone which may be quarried. Earl of Rosse v. Wainman, 14 Mees. & W. 872. In its common acceptation, the term may be said to include those parts of the earth which are capable of being mined or extracted from beneath the surface, and which have a commercial value. Williams v. South Penn Oil Co., 52 W. Va. 181, 43 S. E. 214, 60 L. R. A. 795. But, in its widest sense, "minerals" may be described as comprising all the substances which now form or which once lormed a part of the solid body of the earth, bath external and internal, and which are now destitute of or incapable of supporting animal or vegetable life. In this sense, the word includes not only the various ores of the precious metals, but also coal, clay, marble, stone of various sorts, slate, salt, sand, natural gas, petroleum, and water. See Northern Pac. R. Co. v. Soderberg, 104 Fed. 425, 43 C. C. A. 620; Murray v. Allred, 100 Tenn. 100, 48 S. W. 355, 39 In R. A. 249, 66 Am St. Rep. 740; Gibson v. Tyson. 5 Watts (Pa.) 38; Henry v. Lowe, 73 Mo. 99; Westmoreland, etc., Gas Co., v. De Witt, 130 Pa. 235, 18 Atl. 724, 5 I R. A. 731; Marvel v. Merritt, 116 U. S. 11, 6 Sup. Ct. 207, 29 In Ed. 560; Caldwell v. Fulton, 31 Pa. 475, 72 Am. Dec. 760; Dunham v. Kirkpatrick, 101 Pa. 43, 47 Am. Rep. 696; State v. Parker, 61 Tex. 268; Ridgway Light, etc., Co., v. Elk Co.unty, 191 Pa. 465, 43 Atl. 323.