14 The Journal of the Royal. 
by several officers of different ideas and inclinations. 
This manner of colle6ling is at present unavoidable, but 
when the want of uniformity is due to variety of interest 
in the work there exists opportunity for remedy and im- 
provement. Some of the returns show great and highly 
commendable care in the compilation, while others in the 
lack of interest they exhibit show the very reverse. There 
can be no reason whatever for returns to be sent in neither 
dated nor signed, making it uncertain who was the col- 
le6lor and to what year they apply, and with no explana- 
tion of the indifferent way they are hlled in. The diffi- 
culties of procuring information are in many cases great, 
and resource has to be used to meet these cases. Some 
of the returns show very evident endeavour to get infor- 
mation indire6lly and approximately, where it cannot be 
obtained dire6lly and precisely, and these Commissaries 
are much to be commended in the evident trouble taken 
by them over and over again, and in their persistence. 
These difficulties are chiefly, if not exclusively, with 
villagers, who as a rule refuse all information about their 
farms, when, to give any idea at all, the Commissary has 
to endeavour to obtain indire6lly the number of lots or 
part lots, the number of cultivators and the proportion 
who are known to be industrious and carrying on their 
cultivations, from which meagre knowledge inferences 
may be drawn as to the extent of land in use. But these 
inferences can only with safety be drawn well within the 
scale of the probable produ6lion of industrious people. 
A particular difficulty in arriving at any just measure in 
these village cases where information is withheld, is that 
a lot is not a definite, but it may be a widely varying, 
measure. To ensure certainty a survey would be neces- 
sary in each particular case. The following fa6ls in 
explanation from Mr. Arthur Lennox, Crown Lands 
Department, makes very clear the difficulty. The sub- 
divisions of these properties are of course on record in 
the Registrar's Office, but to hunt into them for the 
information required would be a stupendous undertaking. 
Mr. Lennox writes me in reply to my inquiry : — 
" A * Lot' is not a constant quantity and varies at the 
whim of the purchaser." 
