Reglamento general de las medidas de las aguas (Mexico, 1761)

The printed rulebook that turned irrigation water in New Spain into a measured, divisible quantity. It defines the buey de agua as an opening one vara square and subdivides it into surcos, naranjas, reales and pajas, so that a grant, a sale or a lawsuit could name an exact share; it states the Roman and Castilian law behind the royal claim to water; and it was still the working standard when a Mexico City publisher reprinted it eighty-eight years later, with corrections.