542 



COMPUTATION TABLES 



political unit in most cases, and there is no highly developed town- 

 ship system. 



The New England type of town spread westward to New York, al- 

 though the full town-meeting form of go\'ornment did not follow ; the 

 townships remained irregular and followed no system of territorial 

 division. When the new pubUc domains began to be surveyed by 

 the federal government, a regular system of townships, or terri- 

 torial divisions, was laid out. These townships are right-angled, 

 being six miles on a side and containing 36 square miles. They are 

 determined and also divided by the intersection of meridians or 

 range-lines running north and south, and by parallels or town-lines 

 running east and west. The township is subdivided into 36 square 

 miles, each of these square miles being known as a " section " and 



containing 640 acres. The sections 



are numbered consecutively from 

 1 to 36, beginning at the northeast 

 corner of the township and running 

 directly across to the northwest 

 corner, then back again to the east 

 and back to the west, and so on 

 back and forth until the 36th sec- 

 tion stands at the southeast corner 

 of the township, as showTi in the 

 diagram. In each township, section 

 16 is set aside for school purposes. 

 The sections are themselves divided 

 into quarter-sections, each containing 160 acres. These quarter-sec- 

 tions are again divided into fours, of 40 acres each; and these 40 

 acres are the smallest divisions recognized in government surveys. 



The location of any piece of land is determined by the section 

 number and by the half-section or quarter-section in which it is lo- 

 cated. The township itself is located by its town-line and its range. 

 That is to say, a township in any state might be number 10 south 

 of the base-line that was established by the goverment, and range 

 9 west of some one of the principal meridians fixed by the govern- 

 ment. A particular quarter-section in this township might be the 

 southwest quarter of section number 27 in township 10 south and 

 range 9 west of the sixth principal meridian. 



