STANDARD MAPS.

Hawera & Normanby Star, Volume II, Issue 138, 10 August 1881, Page 3

STANDARD MAPS.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE STAR.

Sir. — In your issue of the 30th ultimo, you did me the honor of devoting your leading article to some few remarks which I made at a public meeting with reference to a paragraph which appeared in your previous issue. I cannot but be grateful for the pretty compliment contained in the opening of your article, but I must say I should sooner have accused the Editor of the Star of being a brilliant orator than to have attributed such qualities to myself, but it appears the eagle eye has discovered what the legal eye failed to perceive.

Since the appearance of the above article I have again read the paragraph in question, the parts relating to the matter are as follows ; " One of the objects of the public meeting to be held to-night has been already complied with, the standard maps of nearly all the new surveys within the provincial district have been at last forwarded to Hawera from Patea . . . Maps of the older surveys have not yet been supplied, but they are less often needed."

It is to be presumed that the paragraph was inserted with some object, and the usual object of such insertions is to give information to the renders of the paper, I cannot avoid the conclusion that any person reading that paragraph might naturally come to the conclusion that in the opinion of the writer the people had been needlessly invited to assemble in public meeting, as far as plans were concerned, although two law pra titioners in the town and one of the proprietors of the Star had signed the requisition for the meeting.

If the paragraph has any meaning it is that public excitement was created about maps, -when all the time those which were required were in the place where it was intended to ask they should be put. I had not been long in practice in Hawera before I discovered at what a great disadvantage we were placed through the want of the information contained in the standard plans of the district ; and after being appointed a member of the Land Board, I exerted myself to procure copirs, and at last I was informed that copies of the standard plans were to be supplied to Hawera. About three months ago I made enquiries at the New Plymouth Snrvey Office respecting these copies, and received the information that copies of nearly all the plans of the new surveys had been forwarded in duplicate to Patea — one copy for Patea and the other tor Hawera office. On a visit to Patea I saw the Commissioner of Crown Lands and the officer in charge of the Survey Department, respecting them, and a promise was made that they should be sent up. without delay ; and at the time I signed the requisition for the meeting I was aware that that promise had been fulfilled, and that these plans were in the Land Office at Hawera. But as from my experience in practice I had found that references to the plans of the old surveys were required at least fifty times to one where reference had to be made to the new ones, the object I had in view in signing the requisition was especially to obtain copies of the old surveys because they were so much more needed than the new ones.

On the morning before the day of the meeting I received precisely the same information as that contained in the paragraph in question from a reliable source as to the detention of the plnns in Patea ; and it is not difficult to imagine the pleasure which that paragraph will afford to the Chief Surveyor when our application comes before him from the head of his department asking why these plans had not been completed, in being able to say how much he regrets, through pressure of important work, he has been hitherto unable to complete these plans, but does himself the honor to forward a paragraph, clipped from the Star, by w.hich it will be seen that the plans which are not supplied are not so much needed as those which have been supplied.

The fact is that through the terrible inaccuracy of the old surveys the plans relating to them are in frequent requisition, and constant delays occur, and payments of sums of five shillings and upwards have frequenty to be made to the New Plymouth office for tracings, when the surveyor on the spot for the sum of one shilling could inspect the whole map, and so more readily -discover sources of error which are not disclosed in the tracing obtained of the single section. The above will, I think, show that the paragraph had a tendency to thwart the object of the meeting, commencing as it does with a misstatemeut of a matter of fact ; and consideiing the enormous amount of trouble there is iv obtaining any public convenience for Hawera, the public have a right to expect the support of the Star, instead of doing that which has a tendency to impede. — I am, &c. J. Barleyman.

[It will be seen on reference to tho above letter that in the sixth paragraph Mr. Barleyman admits that the paragraph contained information — a point questioned in the third. The necessity of the Hawera Land t Office being supplied with standard maps had been so often urged in the columns' of the Star, prior to the public meeting, that it will be difficult to persuade the public that the Star would, or did do anything to impede a movement which had been consistently supported by it throughout. — Ed. Star.]