Page:North Dakota Reports (vol. 3).pdf/157

in this state, or in general, nor as it is used in the judgments of courts.” In Powers v. Larabee this court used the following language: “The description is not expressed in common language; nor are the characters and abbreviations employed such as are used by conveyancers in describing real estate; nor do the people generally use such a combination of words, letters, and figures in referring to or describing land.” It is elementary that courts will take judicial notice of the vernacular language of the people and of its mutations, and hence will take notice whether given words, letters, and figures which are brought to the notice of the court are or are not couched in the ordinary language in use by the Court and people. In the cases cited the holding was in effect that the arbitrary combinations of letters and figures, as used in the respective assessment rolls, is not the language of the court or country, z. e. is not the English language as commonly used. An inspection of the symbol writing will at once show the correctness of this view. The figure 2, according to its established Meaning, represents two units or whole numbers, and the figure 4 represents four units or whole numbers. As employed in the assessment rolls, 2 is made to signify one-half of one whole number, and 4 one-fourth of a whole number. Thus it appears that the symbols in question consist of a combination of letters and figures whereby such letters and figures are perverted from their established signification and use among the people, and made to signify something radically different when used to describe land. It is a matter of which this court will take notice, because a matter of common knowledge, that the government system of surveying land has been quite generally adopted in the western states, and that the system prevails in the States of North Dakota and Minnesota; and yet, as has been shown, the courts of last resort in the two states mentioned have taken judicial cognivance of the fact, and so held that the symbol writing in question, as a mode of describing land, has not the sanction of general usage in either of the said states. In view of these adjudications —that of Powers v. Larabec, being very recent, and made after