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land the difficulty of selling in 10 acre lots would be materially increased.

If the Board, under the 18th clause, could determine that, in given districts, they would sell land only in such quantities as the nature of the survey would conveniently allow, there would be comparatively little difficulty; but, as matters now stand, if the Government lay off sections, and the public are allowed to take 10 acres of them, the confusion as to record and survey is interminable. Suppose, for instance, a surveyed section of irregular shape should contain 93 acres, and nine persons apply for ten acres each out of it, how would it be possible to record the sales satisfactorily without resurveying each allotment? If this were done by the Government it would be extremely expensive. If done by private surveyors the allowance of 15 per cent., allowed for roads and surveys, would increase the confusion, because the only satisfactory means of record is to have every section entered in a book prior to its purchase, and in the order of its position. Breaking sections once recorded in this way, excepting by dividing them in halves or so, makes it impossible to keep the books satisfactorily. It is, therefore, for the Board to consider what are its powers under the 18th clause of the Regulations, and having done so, to determine how it will act, or to suggest some course to meet the difficulty, and with that view the report of the Chief Surveyor will be handed to each member of the Board prior to calling a meeting to consider it.

W. H. Cutten,
Chief Commissioner.

REMARKS BY THE CHIEF SURVEYOR.

Having considered carefully the remarks of the Chief Commissioner on my annual report of 1858-9, it appears clear that the Land Regulations do not permit of a regular system of rural section survey to be conducted solely by the public survey staff; for, as the public have a right to choose indiscriminately unsurveyed lands in all directions and in any quantities from ten acres upwards (where not specially reserved), the wants of the public can only be administered to by a mode of survey operations desultory and disconnected as are the separate applications. These services, numerous and widely diffused as they are, can never be undertaken by the Government with the slightest hope of meeting the same at anything within reasonable cost or time. They will of necessity, therefore, require to be executed by private authorised surveyors.

Having arrived at this conclusion, it now becomes me to recommend the measures required by the above circumstances. The services of the public survey staff should at once be directed to triangulate the country—thus preparing the ground for the chain surveys that depend on the stations fixed by triangulation—and, following the triangulation, a chain survey of roads, bush, and village reserves should be as early as possible executed. I need scarcely explain that the object of triangulation is to afford points of departure and referring marks to found and test the chain measurements of the various surveyors, and that the road, bush, and village reserve survey is to secure to settlers the privileges connected with these three species of reserves.

J. T. Thomson,
Chief Surveyor.

Dunedin, 8th August 1859.