Wellington Provincial Gazette – 1869 – No. 10

Page 53

✨ Survey Instructions

NEW ZEALAND GOVERNMENT GAZETTE,
(PROVINCE OF WELLINGTON.)

Published by Authority.

All Public Notifications which appear in this Gazette, with any Official Signature thereunto annexed, are to be considered as Official Communications made to those persons to whom they relate, and are to be obeyed accordingly.

A. FOLLETT HALCOMBE,
PROVINCIAL SECRETARY.

VOL. XVI. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 25, 1869. No. 10

Instructions for the Guidance of the Staff of Surveyors under the Provincial Government of Wellington.

Survey Office, Wellington, N.Z.,
November 25, 1868.

A uniform system of Surveying essentially requisite for the prosecution of General Surveys.

For the economical and efficient prosecution of a general survey it is essentially requisite that a uniform system of operations should be determined and acted upon. Though various systems may be adopted to suit different localities, each having for its object to meet the requirements of population and to combat with the natural difficulties encountered with in the physical features of the country to be operated upon, yet the cost of surveys will be found to be proportionately more expensive the less efficient the system that is adopted. In order, therefore, to perfect the present system of surveying as practised in this Province the strict attention of the officers of the staff is directed to carry out the following instructions which also contain a general outline of the principles employed.

Primary object of the Surveys. Chain Surveys liable to great accumulation of error.

The division of land into small sections being the chief object of the surveys in this Province, and as the districts may be said to consist generally of hilly and in most cases wooded country it is obvious that to find how many times a certain measure, such as a chain, is contained in a given piece of ground becomes a matter of some difficulty, and that by trusting entirely to chain measures under such circumstances, the accumulation of error must necessarily be great, thus rendering these surveys incapable of union "inter se" or of harmonious combination with other surveys.

Triangulation the best method for Surveys of an extended character.

Recourse must therefore be had to an accurate system of triangulation over such parts of the country as afford facilities for such a process, thus the wooded districts eventually became incorporated by an external network of triangles, precluding the errors before mentioned being transmitted beyond the precincts of their origin.
But even in the prosecution of a trigonometrical survey, which beyond dispute is the only safe basis for operations of an extended character, due regard should be given to the principle of working from "whole to part" and not from "part to whole;" by the former method any errors become subdivided, but by the latter an undue accumulation becomes promulgated in the extension of the work.

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