53,229.

Civil Secretary's Office, Wellington, 18th March, 1853.

Sir ' With refeience to my letter of the 14th instant, transmitting a copy of the Proclamation of the Land Regulations, I have now the honor, by direction of His Excellency the Governor, to request that you will take the necessary steps for earning the same into effect. 'You will have the goodness to report with as little delay as possible it any land outside the limits «f the Otago Block, including the additional 600,000 acres to the original block of 400,000 acres to which I referred in my letter in the margin, can be thrown open for purchase, as proclaimed districts. I have, &c., (Signed) Adfred Domett, Civil Secretary. Walter Mantell, Esq., &c. &c. &c. Otago.

•530, June 7, 1832.

19. Crown Lands Office, Dunedin, 20th April, 1853. Sir, I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 18th March, ultimo, No. 229, directing me to take the necessary steps for carrying the General Land Regulations into effect, and to report if any lands outside the Otago Block (includii g the 600,000 acres additional to the original block of 400,000 acres referred in your letter of 7th June, 1852, No. 539) can be thrown open to purchase as proclaimed districts. 1. In reply I have the honor to inform you that I have announced by advertisement the receipt of the Proclamation and (in accordance with the 31st clause thereof) have fixed the 29th instant as the day on and after which application for the purchase of rural lands will be received. 2. With regard to the Otago Association's ' lock, which I believe has never (even the 400 000 acres) been hi herto defined on any map, I do myself the honor to enclose a map derived from Mr. Kettles' Topographical sketch of 1848, shewing the boundaries of a little more than a million (1,0(10,000) acres, which I have laid down after a most careful investigation, aided by the following documents :— 1. Mr. Commissioner Bell's Memo, enclosed in letter of Hon. Colonial Secretary, 24th March, 1852, —328 2. Parlv. Sess. I'aper, No. 369 of 1845, p. 64. 3. Letter Hon. Colonial Secretary, 7th June, 1852, —539. 4. " " Bth " —549. I have not the 22nd Report of the New Zealand Company. The Matau or Koau would form a bettei, and will in all probability eventually become the Southern limit of the County, but the surveyed land extending beyond those rivers, I have included it in the block. Still, ;n consonance with the opinion expressed in the first clause of your letter of 7th June, 1852, —539, that "the 400,000 acres should be merely a consolidation of the " scattered districts of the Otago Settlement actually surveyed," I have not added any margin whatever to the surveyed land on the South : such additions must have been external to and could not therefore have contributed to the "consolidation" of the block, and the Kaihika range being a disjointed s ries of hills of various elevation, would not 1 ave supplied a "natural boundary " I have the honor therefore to suggest that the belt, colored red in the accompanying plan (enclosures 1 and 2), be thrown open to pui chase as pro. claimed lands I must, however, observe that applications to select therein as unproclaimed land will probably have been received and dealt with before I can be honored wivh your reply. N nrth of Otago I do not know how far the absence of previous survey may opept. to prevent the proclamation of land,but I deem it not unnecessary to remind JO!* C