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With the same object of drawing the hitherto detached survey system together and securing unity of action, and the means of obtaining complete and consistent records for a central department at the Seat of Government whenever the right time shall have arrived for this obvious want to be supplied, Mr. Humphries, the active Chief Surveyor of Taranaki, has also been brought into connection with my department, a portion of his salary being defrayed by the General Government. In his hands the surveys of confiscated lands and of land purchases, as well as the provincial surveys, will be well looked after as far as his means will admit. He is most ready to adopt every precaution laid down. The new work iv progress is tied by fairly determined meridional lines, and by well-checked main traverse, so that there is no danger of any new confusion arising; but the multifarious duties with which Mr. Humphries is still loaded by the Provincial Government, and the difficulties inseparable from acting under two authorities, will necessarily prevent any active reforms being made by him for my department, at all events beyond the re-survey of some blocks of sections allotted, but for the most part not yet granted, and which imperatively require re-adjusting and marking. The country generally, of which portions are now being surveyed inland from New Plymouth, and the condition of Native affairs in it, are ill adapted for trigonometrical survey unless on a large scale, and I foresee no inconvenience from postponing the absorption of this district into the general triangulation of the country until after the purchases of Native territory are sufficiently extended for the trigonometrical survey to be carried on without regard to proprietary rights. The surveys necessary for the purchase of some blocks now under negotiation are, in deference to Native prejudices, being made very slightly. As reconnaissance surveys only, these will afford useful geographical knowledge, and will facilitate future survey; but they are available only for the purpose of purchase, and the real survey will have to be made hereafter. It is clear that these affiliations of the surveys of remote districts to my office in d~nd are far from constituting a highly organized department, but it is still a great step towards securing unity of system, and it enables one establishment to be supported at need from another, at which the work is less pressing, and it will remove all difficulty in keeping pace with the requirements of survey, however large they may be. The imperative demand on the department for block surveys has caused the area of new triangulation to be much less than it otherwise would have been, and its work appears less showy and extensive, but its practical utility has been signally demonstrated in the facility it has afforded for the block surveys, and for the investigation of Native land claims, sketch maps having often been taken from the trigonometrical diagrams which have been found sufficiently complete in detail for the action ofthe Native Lands Court. Maps are now being reduced for publication in four sheets through the photo-lithographic establishment at Wellington, which, though subject to some defects incidental to that very rapid and convenient process, will show very clearly the extent to which the work has been carried. These maps are absolutely necessary to furnish surveyors with a clue to the information they require for survey of large blocks in Native districts, and it is hoped that they will not be without use to the general public. I think that, considering the moderate amount which has been expended on the trigonometrical survey, —that in fact it was long carried on, under very slight encouragement, as a mere voluntary adjunct to the regular duties of the supervision of surveys made for Native Land Court purposes without any separate appropriation of funds for its cost, — it will not be made a ground of blame to this department that the work is not more extensive, or that a more elaborate and therefore more costly system has not been adopted. By the steady pursuance of a system of a rather humble but admittedly sound triangulation, we have gradually spread it over almost every accessible portion of the North Island, and have at last arrived at such a position that I can insist on all surveys being connected with it. We have accumulated a number of excellent instruments, and have trained a thoroughly efficient staff of officers both for field and office work, so that, if the Government should determine to make a sound system of survey univers.al and compulsory, it can be done without delay, and with scarcely any even temporary inconvenience. Having thus explained the steps which have been taken by the department at the head of which I have been placed, to keep pace with the current work, and the means with which I hope to meet the urgent demands of the immediate future, I apprehend that it may be expected of me to furnish some views, based upon the experience I must have gained as the senior General Government survey officer, as to the practical method of dealing with the whole surveys of the colony on a permanent basis, and of uniting the hitherto detached survey establishments over the whole colony into one highly organized department, and gradually but speedily eliminating the errors and discrepancies which have necessarily arisen from the employment not merely of an inadequate and make-shift process of survey, but of a great number of different and diversely inadequate and make-shift processes pursued over long periods in each different portion of the colony. The excellent means which the Government has taken of obtaining undeniable information, and the soundest professional views on these matters, by the employment of Major Palmer, releases from the necessity of any repetition of the urgent need for reform, and of the undeniable fact that the only remedy must lie in the rapid extension of connected triangulation over the whole colony, and the basing of all surveys upon it—propositions which I have on every occasion, I fear pertinaciously, urged during the last nine years; and the report which he has

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