THE NEW SURVEYOR-GENERAL.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 8585, 29 March 1906, Page 3

THE NEW SURVEYOR-GENERAL.

APPOINTMENT OF MR HUMPHRIES. Mr T. Humphries,- Commissioner of Crown Lands for Canterbury, has received official notice of his appointment to the position of Surveyor-General, in succession to Mr J. Wj A. Marchant. Mr Humphries is a native of England, and came to New Zealand, in 1851. He joined the Government Survey Department at Taranaki, as cadet, under the late Mr Octavius Uarrington, then Chief Surveyor. He had <as fel-kw-cadets Mr W. Hurst-house, Chief Engineer of Roads, and Mr S. Percy Smith, a former Surveyor-General.' 1 Mr Humphries later on was Chief Surveyor for Taranaki until the provinces were abolished, and held the tame position under the General Government. On the death of Mr C. D. Whitcombe he succeeded that gentleman as Commissioner of Crown Lands ana Chief Surveyor of Taranaki. He has held the same positions in Auckland, from 1889 to 1891; in Hawke's Bay, from 1891 to 1897 ; and in Nelson, from 1897 to February, 1902, when he was appointed to the position he will now relinquish. He- has seen a great tjeal of the rough side of colonial life. He served as a Volunteer in the Taranaki Rifles during the Maori war, and while he was soldiering there he was engaged in making surveys and plans at Waitara with the general staff, under General Pratt. Afterwards he served with Sir Harry Atkinson's Forest Rangers, and as a lieutenant in the Taranaki 'Militia. He is a student of astronomy. On behalf of the Government he made observations of the transit of Venus in 1882, at New Plymouth. He was also employed by the Government to do photographic work in connection with the total eclipse of the sun on September 9, 1885, at Bennett's Hill, Masterton. His observations of the transit of Venus were incorporated in the calculations made at the Radcliffe Observatory, Oxford, England, in 1882.