or the deficiency as the case may be of the stamp duty payable upon or in respect of such deed or instrument and there shall also be paid over and above the said duty or deficiency a sum by way of a fine if such deed or instrument shall be presented to be stamped more than one month and less than three months after execution at the rate of twenty pounds per centum on the value of the stamps to be affixed and if such deed or instrument shall be stamped more than three months after execution at the rate of one hundred pounds per centum on the value of the stamps to be affixed but in no case shall the last-mentioned fine be less than the sum of Five Pounds.

C. T. Batkin,
Secretary.
Stamp Office, Wellington,
14th November, 1867.

SURVEY REPORT.

Chief Surveyor’s Office,
Southland, January 3rd, 1868.

Sir,—I have the honor to submit herewith, the annual return of the work completed by the surveyors of this Department, for the year ending the 31st of December, 1867.

The principal work undertaken during the past year has been the survey of rural land purchased under the "Southland Waste Lands Act, 1865;" of this 91,066 acres have been completed, and the greater part of it has been already mapped. The purchases have been made in almost every district in the Province, in many cases widely apart, greatly increasing thereby the labor and cost of properly connecting them with the trigonometrical surveys.

The New South Wales system of survey, which, with your Honor’s concurrence, I introduced into this Province, now two years ago, i.e., of giving each surveyor a separate district, making him personally responsible for the correctness of his surveys, and for the proper laying out of all roads in connection therewith, and paying for the survey at a fixed rate per acre, varying with the size of the sections, has, during the past two years, had a fair trial, and I have now much pleasure in drawing your Honor’s attention to the satisfactory results of this system.

The total amount surveyed during 1866 and 1867 is 165,178 acres. Of this 3865 acres were purchased under previous acts, leaving 161,318 acres that have been surveyed of the land purchased under the late Land Act of 1865. The total cost of the survey which had to be defrayed by the purchasers has been £5446 11s 10d, or on an average, 8.102d per acre. This, considering the nature of the surveys, which, I am confident, will bear any tests as to their correctness, may be considered the cheapest surveys that have ever been executed in this Province, and they will bear the most favorable comparison with those of any of the other Provinces in New Zealand; for although a few of the purchases have been made in large blocks, the majority have been taken up in small sections, averaging only from two to four hundred acres, many of them being as low as twenty acres.

The total cost of the Survey Department for the year 1867 was £981 8s 8d, so the actual cost to the Province has only been a fraction over 2½d per acre on the amount surveyed during the year. (This, of course, does not include the cost of the 450,000 acres of triangulation included in the previous year.) This will doubtless afford your Honor’s Government the greatest satisfaction.

Through the courtesy of the Chief Surveyors of Otago and Canterbury, and the Surveyors-General of Victoria and New South Wales, I am enabled to lay before your Honor the cost per acre of the surveys executed in their respective provinces and colonies. The Chief Surveyor of Canterbury, in his letter of 10th of May, 1867, says:—

"The actual cost of laying out purchased land, pre-emptive rights, and public reserves, had been fourteen pence per acre throughout the Province; isolated bush sections in remote positions have cost much more; in some cases 5s an acre, perhaps 2s 6d on the average, while the bulk of sections on the plains have cost less than 1s per acre. The cost of laying out and surveying lines of road, where both sides have been marked and defined, has been at the rate of £6 per mile. These results include all sections surveyed, whether by the staff or by contract surveyors. The only contract out at present is let to Mr Hewlings, a very old and thoroughly trustworthy surveyor, and is at the following rates:—Sections within 20 miles of Timaru, 1s; 20 to 30 miles, 1s 6d; beyond 30 miles 2s."