Rep. 641. Under these circumstances the interpretation placed by congress on this resolution in the original act should be adopted and followed by the courts. “If a thing contained in a subsequent statute be within the reason of a former statute, it shall be taken to be within the meaning of that statute; and if it can be gathered from a subsequent statute in pari materia what meaning the legislature attached to the words of a former statute, they will amount to a legislative declaration of its meaning, and will govern the construction of the first statute.” U.S. v. Freeman, 3 How. 564." “ Where it can be gathered from a later act that the legislature attached a certain meaning to an earlier cognate one, this would be taken asa legislative declaration of its meaning there.” Endl. Interp. St. § 366. And see Suth. St. Const. § 402; Philadelphia, etc., R. Co. v. Catawissa R. Co., 53 Pa. St. 61; U. S. v. Gilmore, 8 Wall. 330; U. S. v. Alexander, 12 Wall 180. The indemnity lands are therefore granted equally with the place lands, or lands within the forty-mile limits, by this act. They are of the “amount of twenty sections per mile” granted, and the words, “thereby and hereby is granted,” apply to them, and pass the title. The only distinction between the two classes of land is the method by which they are identified. Once identified, the company has the same title to the one as to the other. The indemnity provision does not make an additional grant, but simply points out the method by which lands already granted may be identified. Grants of this nature are not new. By the seventh section of the Nevada enabling act, approved March 21, 1864 (13 St. p. 32), congress provided “that section sixteen and thirty-six in every township, and, where such sections have been sold or otherwise disposed of by any act of congress, other lands, equivalent thereto, in legal subdivisions of not less than one-quarter section, and as contiguous as may be, shall be, and hereby are, granted to said state for support of common schools.” The supreme court held that “this was to grant to the state in presenti a quantity of land equal in amount to the sixteenth and thirty-sixth sections, the grant to take effect when the sfatus of the lands was fixed by survey and they were capable of identification. Congress, however, reserved, until this was done, the power of disposition,
