ConneLt.—On New Zealand Surveys. Xxix 
and it is just as necessary that we should have some means of testing the 
accuracy of the given direction of a line as its length, ere the check can be 
complete. 
The only efficient and proper manner in which this can be done involves 
the necessity of knowing, and that antecedently to any detail survey being 
made— 
1st, The true lengths of the various lines joining the permanent 
stations to which a detail survey is connected; and 
2nd, The inclination of such lines to a uniform standard of direction, 
and, as a matter of course, to each other. 
The lines joining the various permanent stations I shall hereafter call 
Trig lines, and the permanent stations Trig stations. 
It is quite true that it is possible to dispense with the knowledge of the 
inclination of each of the Trig lines to a common standard of direction, but 
it is absolutely necessary that their inclination to each other, and their true 
length, should be known, to furnish a sufficient means by which the accuracy 
of detail surveys can be efficiently checked ; and the advisibility of having a 
standard of direction amounts almost to a necessity. 
The only means by which practically the length and direction of Trig 
lines can be correctly ascertained I need scarcely say is by triangulation, 
founded upon a carefully measured base line ; and therefore all competent 
surveyors are perfectly agreed as to the necessity for this work being under- 
taken. 
There appears, however, to be some difference of opinion as to whether 
it is an imperative necessity that triangulation should precede detail survey, 
or whether it may not be possible to permit the detail surveys to go on with 
triangulation to follow. 
Major Palmer adopts the latter view; I, myself, in common I believe 
with many other colonial surveyors, hold to the former with extreme 
tenacity. 
The special system of triangulation, which it is most advisable to in- 
itiate and adopt must depend entirely upon the views which may be adopted 
on this point. 
Certain geographical and scientific advantages of considerable importance 
and of great interest are unquestionably obtained as the ultimate result of the 
system Major Palmer advocates, but with the terrible consequence attached 
of losing all control and abandoning all check upon the detail survey of the 
Colony for many years. 
It is true that Major Palmer recognises that it is advisable that “ due 
exertions should be made to cause the triangulation in all possible cases to 
precede the detail survey ;” but his system not only makes no provision for 
