The Daily Intelligencer

GOVERNMENT SURVEYS.

WASHINGTON, June 26.—The Commissioner of the General Land Office has completed his annual instructions to the Surveyor General, which embrace some very important changes from those of last year. The appropriation for surveys is the same as last year, $300,000. A slight increase has been made in the rates for payment of surveys, and as readjusted they will be as follows: For standard and meander lines, $12 per mile; for township lines, $10; for section lines, $8. The practice of triangulating or running traverse lines to isolated areas of surveyable lands will be discontinued. The Surveyor General will be required to devote one third of the apportionment, if necessary, to extend the outline surveys, preparatory to subdivisional work. The new regulations are much more exacting than the old ones in requirements relating to accurate surveys. Where errors of survey exceed the limits allowed in the manual they are to be treated as fraudulent. The Surveyor General will be required to establish

A TRUE MERIDIAN LINE

in the vicinity of each of the three offices, with a view of securing uniformity in the operations of field instruments. He is also required to establish standard measurements. All field instruments used by deputies must be approved by the Surveyor General. Deputies will be further required to prove their work in the field by celestial observations generally. The chainmen and moundmen are required to give separate testimony as to the correct discharge of their duties. Before a deputy proceeds to subdivide a township he must locate boundaries, and make such necessary correction of corners on the same as will allow of an accurate subdivision in accordance with law. Hitherto a quarter section not having three established corners was regarded as unsurveyed, and could be disposed of under the new regulations. When a corner can be approached within twenty chains, and unless corners are established on both lines, it will be regarded as surveyed, and may be disposed of in whole or in part. In order

TO AVOID DEFICIENCIES

Surveyors General are required to reserve ten per cent. of their apportionment until the amount of all surveying accounts for the fiscal year are known. Government plats of public lands are to be drawn in India ink, free from tint, in order that they may be copied by the photo-lithographic process, and a specimen plat and a code of symbols then devised so that mineral lands and all other objects may be delineated and uniformity of expression will be followed by all Surveyors General. In the survey of private land claims it is required that the angles of intersection of all boundary lines shall be taken, as well as their courses. Surveyors General are requested to submit their views as to the expediency of marking certain corners of a survey by the use of iron posts, and to furnish estimates of the cost of manufacture and distribution of the same.