TOPICS OF THE DAY.

New Zealand Times, Volume LXXI, Issue 4419, 27 July 1901, Page 4

TOPICS OF THE DAY.

COASTAL SURVEYS. The survey of +h© New Zealand coasts which was commenced by H.M.S. Penguin, and is to be continued by H.M.S. Mildura, now on her way from Sydney for that purpose, is being undertaken as the result of representations made by the Premier t 0 the Imperial Government in January, 1900. Mr Seddon stated that some portions of th© coast bad never been properly surveyed, while in other cases the coasts or bars had changed, and the existing charts were misleading. The original survey of the coasts, which wasonly a partial one, was carried out by H.M.S. Acherbn and Pandora between 1849 and 1855. The programme for the present survey includes the North Island coasts from Gape Kidnappers to Gape .Pallisor, from Portland Island to East Cape, the Bey of Plenty, a small portion off Coromandel .Harbour and the West Coast from Cap© Maria van Diemen to Manukau. The portions of the South Island t©< bo surveyed are from Cascade Point to Farewell Spit, a small portion of the coast on each side of the French Pass, the and Bounty Islands. Th© colony is to pay half the cost of the survey. The full cost of a single ship and staff varies, according to size, from £IO,OOO to £15,000 per annum. MACADAM REDIVIVUS. “The haphazard methods of roadmaking end road-ifiending upon’ which we have fallen back supply a curious example of the tendency to retrograde whenever the spur to progress is absent.” This :s nob taken from a report of Wellington’s City Engineer, but from an editorial in the Melbourne “ Ago.” It seems that in Melbourne a persistent agitation is going on for a reversion to the methods of Macadam in the matter of road construction. The “Age,” in its summing-up article, says;—“Nobody directly makes profits by seeing that our highways are constructed on the soundest system, although everybody, pays indirectly for a lapse into somnolence. Consequently three-quarters of a century after Macadam’s teaching was universally accepted, local bodies in up-to-date Victoria, from the City, Corporation downwards, are found weakly compromising upon his preceptf}. Such methods are known to be penny wise and pound foolish, but tho penny wisdom is always easy, and to short-sighted economists alluring. A glance at many of the old coach-roads iii England, shows them still in as fine condition as when the heavy mail's went bowling along them dally. They may be a little grass-grown at the fringes, hut the contour and surfac© of the "road is as perfect as half a century ago. A minimum of repairing, executed on proper principles, has sufficed to keep thein intact. The system adopted in Victoria is ‘casual.’ It represents a compromise between the true system of macadamising and, the easy plan of dumping down ill-prepared metal and smothering it with material that will roll into a good-looking surface at once, yet prove about as stable as pebbles shovelled into the sea-sand.” ' These are words of editorial wisdom equally as pertinent to Wellington as to the city to which they have special reference.