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H.—l9.

Owing to pressure of work in office, copies of application maps were supplied to Deputy Land Tax Commissioner by contract. Plans of eleven districts and eleven towns have been published, and forwarded to this office for sale out of the series proposed. Mr. H. Trent, Chief Draftsman, is in charge of the district accounts and general supervision in the absence of the Chief Surveyor. During the year 191 leases have been prepared, and 108 Crown grants. Mr. Curtis, Land Transfer Draftsman, has prepared 126 certificates of title, and examined and checked 107 plans, in most instances, re-plotting old Government surveys. I must again draw attention to the urgency of erecting a good fire-proof safe at the Nelson office for the preservation of the records. A district survey office is required at Westport; temporary offices are being rented in the meanwhile. Jxo. S. Browning, Chief Surveyor.

No 8. TARANAKI. Survey Office, New Plymouth, Ist July, 1879, Triangulation. During the year 54,000 acres have been triangulated at a cost of a little over 2d. per acre. The rate is higher than usual, but is due to two causes. In the case of Mr. Anderson's work at Waitara, it was native obstruction in the shape of razing mounds and surreptitiously removing the pipes, whilst with Mr. Climie, at Waimate, it was caused by the necessity of building mounds seven and eight feet high at the majority of the stations and being of such height something substantial was required. I was all over the ground myself and saw that in no single instance where it had been done could it have been avoided. It was mainly due to the height of the fern, flax, and toi-toi on the plains. In Mr. Climie's work at Waimate, the verification base, fifteen miles distant from the original, gave good evidence of the reliableness of the work, there being a difference of only -2 of a link in a mile. His work at the Carlyle end closed on to Whenuakura triangulations executed in 1872; the values of the line by the two triangulations differing at the rate of 2.2 links per mile. The greatest accumulated rate of error per mile in the close of any polygon in this year's triangulation, is I*s links, the next two highest I*3, and all the others under -4. The triangulation now embraces all areas suitable for its prosecution, where sectional survey is likely to be needed, excepting from New Plymouth to Stoney River at Okato, which Mr. Skinner is now engaged upon; and its being thrown over the greater part of the old unreliable work affords great facility for the carrying out land transfer operations. Correction has been made at the furthest extremity of the surveys, done under the system of circuit traverses a distance of eight miles to the westward of the meridian line. The meridian and perpendicular distance by triangulation differs only 7-2 links north, and 4-2 links east from the value assigned to it two years ago by the traverses, thus affording further evidence of the work being generally trustworthy. Sectional Surveys. During the year the towns of Manaia and Stratford have been surveyed, and have cost at the rate of 12s. 2^d per section. Manaia on the plains is not, as many suppose, grass land, but covered with heavy fern through which all street and back section lines had to be cut; worse still was the case of Stratford; the forest having been felled, the lines had to be chopped through fallen timber, so that the work may be considered to have been done very economically. The surveys of 33,185 acres of suburban and rural work have been completed ; of these 17,490 were on the Waimate Plains, and in open country, the remainder in the bush. On taking into consideration the great difficulties that have been met with at Waimate through Native obstruction, the cost of 2s. 2Jd. per acre, including the forest surveys, must be considered very favorable. lam pleased to be enabled to testify to the very excellent work executed by the staff, the closures in almost every instance being exceedingly good; and I have taken especial pains to see that they were genuine. All the surveyors use the steel tape for measurements, the chain having long since been discarded here. In the forest over gullies from one to five chains wide, a thin steel wire has been used strained by spring balance, the amount for sag to be allowed for with a certain tension being previously determined ; this gives results far more satisfactory than measuring up and down, and correcting it to horizontal measurement. In fact I may state in commendation of all the officers, that they spare no pains to make the work as accurate as possible, which in our forest country, where there is no triangulation, is indispensible. The only fault that I have had to find is, that closes which are in all reason excellent they have gone over again, seeking for some slight error that will make it closer still: and, as I tell them, unnecessaily increasing the expense by trying to make things perfect with imperfect material; there is no doubt, but that the good closes in the forest are clue to the careful measurements made by the steel band, and the method used for maintaining the true bearing. In the traverses experience soon proves that the bearing in terms of the initial meridian cannot be continued long without some means of adjusting it, and as some of our sectional work has been from six to eight miles from the meridian line, the only way was to test it astronomically. At three points on the Mountain Road, I have observed for true meridian, and I feel confident that no line on it from Inglewood to Mangawhero, a distance of twenty miles, is more than 1' out of the true 3.— H. 19.