Mr. GULLY.

128 square miles triangulation, 12 weeks, £365 16 0
or £2 17s. per square mile.

7 lineal miles road survey, 1 week, 30 9 6
or £4 7s. per lineal mile.

47,975 acres, 2000-acre sections, 9 weeks, 274 7 0
or 1½d. per acre.

6,500 acres, 80-acre sections, 6 weeks, 182 18 0
or 6½d. per acre.

100 quarter-acre sections, 1 week, 30 9 6
or 6s. 1d. per section.

29 weeks, £884 0 0

Mr. HATELY.

13,965 acres, 80-acre sections, 16 weeks, £323 13 10
or 6d. per acre.

1220 quarter-acre sections, 10 weeks, 202 6 2
or 3s. 4d. per section.

26 weeks, £526 0 0

The above includes the expense of going and coming from and to head quarters, and mapping. These surveys embrace 1st, selection of town, village, and ferry sites; 2nd, the laying down of permanent roads and reservation of present available tracks; 3rd, bush and timber reserves; and lastly, division of districts systematically into sections allotted so as to provide for general occupation.

Having thus reported on the Government surveys of last season, it becomes me to report on the surveys given in by private surveyors for record in the public maps. Prior to this so little had been done that these did not call for report to the Board: now, these surveys so generally affect the Crown lands that they become a matter of serious public concern.

There are three authorized private surveyors practising, and during last year 2652 acres of survey have been given in for record. Small as this extent is, as compared with the labours of the Government surveyors, they penetrate into every district, "spotting" the whole irregularly. The practice in this species of survey is for the applicant for Crown lands to employ a surveyor at his own expense, who goes out and marks off the required land. These choices are as various as the members of the population, and being out of the surveyed districts, have no supervision either in the Land or Survey Departments. Thus, as they progress, it early becomes apparent that public interests are not attended to, but simply the interests of the applicant.

1st, Town, village, and ferry sites are absorbed; 2nd, Permanent roads and available tracks are closed; 3rd, Bush and timber are monopolized; and lastly, the district is not laid off for the purposes of general occupation, but in a manner that solely suits the applicant.

A glance at the record maps is only required to prove these assertions.

The method of survey is obsolete, and not permitted in approved practice, the surveys being "built" on each other, or connected with each other by a string of lines and angles. The method admits of no check, and is pregnant with errors: these remain on the maps undisclosed till an independent survey joins them; thus at best the recording of these surveys requires "humouring." A chain of overlapping is a frequent error, and at this early stage of the labours of the private surveyors, one allotment has been found three chains out in a 16-acre section, and another 16 chains misplaced in a 46-acre section. Few of these surveys have yet stood the test of "closing" with subsequent surveys; the difficulties may thus be said only to be coming to light.

With errors so great in magnitude, it may be quite possible for parties to build their houses on the lands sold to their neighbours, in which case it will be a question of law as to whether the Government or the private individual will have to stand the consequences.

Apart from the incorrectness attached to the unsystematic and obsolete methods employed in private survey, the cost at present and in future is a subject to be enquired into. The applicant is allowed 10 per cent. deduction for his survey expenses, or 1s. per acre: this will be seen to be only double the cost of the Government surveys, but it is nominally so. Scattered as these small patches of surveys are in every district, in the progress of the Government surveys over them all, as a measure preliminary to systematic division of the country, will require to be resurveyed. It is well known to the profession, that re-survey of obliterated boundaries costs double of an original one: thus the saving of the survey expenses to the public by private survey is imaginary. Private survey entails on the Government not only future double cost of survey, but the loss of village, road, and bush reserves, or the